The series of Baltic DB&IS biennial conferences was started in 1994. The first conference was held in Trakai, Lithuania. It was initiated by Prof. Janis A. Bubenko Jr. (Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden) and Prof. Arne Sølvberg (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway) and organised by Institute of Mathematics and Informatics (Lithuania), Vilnius University (Lithuania), Vilnius Technical University (Lithuania). This time was a hard time for Baltic research community. After the crash of Soviet Union the cooperation with the research centres in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, and Novosibirsk was broken. The horizontal cooperation between research centres in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia was weak developed. We had almost no touch with the research centres in West countries and even in East European countries. The idea of Janis A. Bubenko jr. and Arne Sølvberg to organise Baltic Workshops on databases and information systems was indeed a great idea. It helped to consolidate research communities in Baltic countries, to establish contacts with research centres in West and East European countries, and even to renew contacts with the researchers in Russia. These workshops have become a real incentive for development of regional research and boost of international cooperation. Janis A. Bubenko jr. and Arne Sølvberg helped also to receive founding and even trained us in West European conference organization technologies. Despite the fact that Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius had big experience in organizing large soviet conferences, this experience was almost not applicable in organizing conferences according to West standards. Besides, the time was very hard. It is enough to mention that during the conference in Trakai the conference venue and diner room were protected by armed safeguard.
In year 2000, the international workshop was transformed into international conference. Two years earlier, the selected papers of the conference started to be published by international publishers. The detail statistic data are presented in the table below.
The analysis of this table shows not only positive but also some negative trends. Starting from year 2008, the geography of participants contracted significantly. It seems that it happened not only for reasons of world-wide financial crisis, but also for changes in state scientific policies. In our opinion, the trend to ignore international conferences and to accent publications only in high-quality international scientific journals is not perspective and even malign.
Another negative trend is the permanently enlarged gap between research communities and industry. If first conferences had significant industrial tracks and intensive round table discussions, in three recent conferences the participation of industry partners is less than minimal. In our opinion, this is the evidence that, at least in Baltic countries, the state policy oriented to encourage the cooperation among research centres and industry is not effective. Despite these negative trends, we remain optimistic and believe that Baltic DB&IS biennial conferences reborn for its new life.
In the final, we express our warmest thanks to all authors who contributed to the 10th Jubilee Conference, to the members of international Programme Committee, additional reviewers, and to the organizing team. We also express our very special thanks and deep gratitude to all our sponsors. Last, but not the least, we also thank all the participants of the conference.
Proceedings
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