Report

 

Martin Hopewell: Organising an ILMC meeting is always something of a labour of love, but it's probably true that we tried even harder to make ILMC 20 more 'special' than at any previous meeting. The significance of the 20th anniversary struck everyone on the team during the months leading up to the conference, and it became increasingly important to everyone involved that this edition should be at least as successful as our most recent ones – so it was with even more relief than usual that we reached Monday morning and realised that the weekend had produced one of the best ILMCs so far.
 
The increased capacity of 950 delegates did not cause any major catastrophes in the bars or meeting rooms, the new venue for the Gala Dinner turned out to be real winner, and all of the scheduled events – from the poker to the Indian meal – produced some magic moments to file away in our mental scrapbooks.
 
On top of that, the sessions were well-attended, productive and expertly handled by this year's line-up of hard-working chairs – mixing up a verbal cocktail with just about the right measures of fireworks, comedy, information and constructive debate. With the small exception of the Sunday exodus from the hotel instigated by rumours of a hurricane about to hit the British isles, and the discomfort caused to a third of our members by the farcical anti-smoking laws, ILMC 20 was every bit of the 'happening' that we had hoped it would be, and marked the conference's twentieth year in fitting style.

My thanks to everyone who worked so hard to make ILMC 20 as special as we wanted it to be, to everyone who took the time and trouble to attend, and to all those who have supported the event throughout the years and made it possible for us to have arrived where we are. I'm more proud to have been involved in this little saga than most people could guess.

Now for ILMC 21...!