The Aromatics Conference is over, and before I even see the results of the delegate feedback, I know it is going to rate as one of the best conferences we've ever done, possibly even the very best.
Throughout the first day on Wednesday, which was mostly on benzene and styrene, people kept coming up to say, with a mixture of pleasure and astonishment, that certain papers had been really excellent and that they had thoroughly enjoyed the sessions.
We certainly had some Big Name Speakers on both days, and they had plenty of riveting stuff to say about these most unpredictable of "interesting times."
From a selfish point of view, we organisers were pleased and indeed relieved when about 20 delegates, most of them from major producers, signed up in the last week. Just-in-time planning seems to be a feature of the industry at many levels now.
With 87 European aromatics folk in the room, it looked nice and full, and there was a very lively level of questioning, particularly after the first day's trader panel.
"Tough crowd," said our keynote speaker, after a lady in the audience accused aromatics producers of speculating in the markets.
The Top Conference Food moment was the arrival of Dutch Speculaas cookies, courtesy of Vitol, in Thursday's morning break. They are traditional around Sinterklaas time in the
(photo: aromatic Speculaas spices)
Delegates will be able to see all the papers in full on the conference website, but for those with a more limited attention span, there are nine news articles with the highlights of the conference on the ICIS news website.
Click here for:
The 8th European Aromatics & Derivatives Conference, jointly organised by ICIS and International e-Chem, took place in Amsterdam from Wednesday 25 November to Thursday 26 November 2009.
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