Speakers
"For instance we have an innovative speaker about the harvesting robot from Japan. The speakers are very international. They come from countries such as Australia, Switzerland, America, China and Japan. This year we have approached speakers for the scientific part in a different way. In 2010 we approached all speakers with certain questions and those we found of interest we invited. Now we did this more professionally by means of a 'Call for Abstracts'. Online papers are submitted and a number is selected by a group of scientists via a certain procedure.
This time 80 papers were submitted, of which 18 will effectively be presented during the congress. The other papers will be presented as posters. For the scientific part we received important assistance from a complete committee, because we do not ourselves have sufficient knowledge about this."
Focus on strawberries
"The entire congress will be directed towards strawberries. For the commercial part we have various interesting speakers as well. For this we invite people with purpose. We were already thinking about themes and on that basis we contacted speakers. We will deal with all aspects of the chain and therefore we have various key-note speakers. The first day we will start with trend watcher. A well-known name on Thursday is the American Linda Eatherton. We will close the day with two different speakers, who will talk about the subject: 'From food preparing to Michelin Star'. Thursday will finish with a full-dress dinner. The last day will be a practice day with a combination of visits to an auction house, the experimental centre and growers. The congress will be held for the better part in the Elzenveld Hotel in Antwerp. Hoogstraten last year September already started with the preparations." Leen says: "The location and the facilities have all been arranged. We are still looking for a few speakers in the program area. This is almost finalized. As soon as that is ready, of course the last part comes, the promotion and of course the registration."
Registration
The registrations have just started, 230 seats are available, a little less than last time. It was very successful in 2010, therefore we expect that the congress will be full up. The leading language of the event will be English. There will be translations to French and Spanish simultaneously. The largest group of entries came from Belgium and the Netherlands in 2010, but in total we welcomed people from 26 countries. Now we also have entries from various countries and we are trying for more than 20 nationalities. Early birds, people registering before 31 July, will receive 75 Euro as a discount on their registration."
Hoogstraten
Hoogstraten organized the event. "We will definitely come back with our name these three days and during the presentations, but it certainly is not a one-man show," Jan stresses. "I can present something about marketing myself. In the scientific area the testing centre will supply information. Also the growers will have their opportunity in the subject Responsibly Fresh. We also find it very important to have a mix of various companies to give a presentation and not only present ourselves. Of course we are the bigger supplier of strawberries. Last year we almost touched 31 million kilos. This we also market under our own brand. Therefore we focus on strawberries. For the time being we will not make the scope any wider with other products. This is what makes our congress unique. In case in the future the volume of baby-kiwi's increases we can always add this unique product."
For more information:
www.hoogstraten.eu/congress
www.hoogstraten.eu/congress
