We wish to express our deep gratitude to all those who made the 5th edition of the international conference Computers, Privacy and Data Protection (CPDP) 2012 “European Data Protection: Coming of Age”, from 25 till 27 January 2012, a successful and memorable event. 

Special thanks to…

… the sponsors. We express our sincere appreciation for the funding which made the conference a success and allowed us to fly in speakers, set up an NGO workshop and pay travel and lodging for PhD students who defended their papers.

… the chairpersons and moderators. We were fortunate to have chairpersons, who planned their sessions so carefully, helped by the mysterious bell ringer.

… the speakers. You were all sharp and to the point.

… the participants who attended the sessions.

… everyone involved in organizing the meetings, transport, protocol, lunches/dinners, breaks and receptions and in preparing the brochures. People from iPAVUB and KNMG: you did a superb job.

This year, CPDP welcomed 692 persons at the conference. Another 500 people were reached at the free public events organized during the conference evenings. These events were also well attended by the regular conference participants who appreciated these more relaxed side events.

The 3 days conference offered participants 25 panels and several workshops and special sessions with 237 speakers from the academia, the public and private sectors, and the civil society. New institutions, groups and partners turned to us to help setting up panels (the Human Technology Lab from TU Berlin, IVIR from Amsterdam University, and many others). Both the Council of Europe and the Polish Permanent Representation to the European Union provided their collaboration.

Our conference website (www.cpdpconferences.org) reached 5698 unique visitors with 9198 visits to consult 22381 pages. Our busiest day was Tuesday 24 January, when we had 750 visitors exactly (50% more than on our last year’s busiest day) and on Monday 24 January when we had 501 visitors. 

These figures and the output of the conference make us feel that we are responding to the mission of CPDP: “creating a platform animated by privacy stakeholders”.

Please keep checking www.cpdpconferences.org and http://www.europeanprivacyday.org/, where we will publish this year’s contributions (presentations, videos, short bios of speakers, etc.), as well as first-hand news about CPDP 2013 that will take place in Brussels on 23-25 January 2013. You can also follow us on Facebook (Computers, Privacy and Data Protection (CPDP)) and Twitter (cpdpconferences).

All reactions, comments or suggestions for future editions are welcome and should be sent to info@cpdpconferences.org.

Sincerely,

Paul De Hert on behalf of the Programming Committee