The 8th EMVA (European Machine Vision Association) Business Conference started on a very sunny note on the evening of Thursday, April 15th in the city of Istanbul. The 150 participants met already on the eve of the conference on a roof terrace in the vibrating Beyoglu area of the city. The lively networking of the leading heads of the international machine vision industry was adequately framed by a spectacular view on the sunset over the Bosphorus. During the next one and a half days the conference delegates got to know a lot about the economic situation of Turkey in general and the business climate for machine vision especially, and about the opportunities offered by this dynamically evolving country. Not only for export but also for research and development within the country. Presentations about technical trends and market data from Europe, North America and Japan rounded off the conference program. The closing highlight most certainly has been the session with Mark McGregor, trainer with the internationally renowned St. Gallen Business School, talking about "Leadership after the Crisis".

Cloudy it became then through the Eyjafjalla volcano eruption. Only a couple of east-bound flights could actually leave as scheduled; all flights to Europe and most of the flights to North America had already been canceled when the conference was concluded. However, the managers and entrepreneurs of the vision industry are as creative as they are dynamic. Thus a multi-faceted Machine Vision Trek to the 22 countries of the participants could be witnessed: the chartered overland bus to Munich (34 travelers, 2,000 km, 36 hours), the propeller-driven airplane (Istanbul via Dubrovnik to Nuremberg), the Greece - Italy - Austria - Germany flight and car combination or the extended stay in the exciting city on the Bosphorus are only some exemplary solutions to the logistical problem of getting back.
Some of the adventure stories of the European Machine Vision Trek 2010 will be covered in our next issue of the INSPECT.