EDEN Welcome Reception with Fellow Awards

The EDEN Annual Conference started tonight with the welcome reception in the Noble Hall of Alfandega Congress Center.

During the reception, I had the pleasure of welcoming the delagates and handing over the diplomas to the new EDEN Fellows. The following are my notes for the welcome address and the laudation of the fellows:

Dear conference delegates, colleagues, Fellows and friends of EDEN. On behalf of the EDEN Executive Committee I warmly welcome you to the 21th Annual EDEN Conference.

It feels good to be back in Portugal - one of my favorite countries.

We have about 350 participants from 43 countries at this conference. The best represented countries are Belgium (39), Portugal (28) and Norway (27). The number of contributions to be presented are 149.

I know that many have traveled far to come to the friendly and exciting city of Porto. So, I’d like to acknowledge our delegates who come from countries outside Europe:

Australia, Brasil, Canada, China, Iran, Pakistan, Israel, Korea, Mexico, Nepal and the US.

We do hope that valuable partnerships and good exchange of experience will develop with the international community. Personally, I think that social and professional networking is one of the most important parts of the EDEN conferences.

In its Europe 2020 strategy, the EU Commission stressed the importance of healthy and active ageing, and 2012 is The European Year of Active Ageing and the Solidarity between Generations. EDEN has therefore chosen Open Learning Generations – Closing the Gap from Generation Y to the Mature Lifelong Learners as the theme for this conference.

The 2012 EDEN Fellows

Tonight, I have the honor to announce that the EDEN Executive Committee has granted the EDEN Fellow Award to 6 distinguished colleagues who have demonstrated excellence in professional practice of open, distance and e-learning and provided valued support to the evolution and progress of EDEN.

Three of them are NOT here today, so they will receive their diplomas later. I will now announce who they are:

• Andrea Karpati, Eotvos Lorand University, MULTIPED Centre for Multimedia and Educational Technology, Hungary
• Lisa-Marie Blaschke, Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg, Germany
• Michael Auer, Carinthia University of Applied Sciences, School of Systems Engineering, Austria

Now I will call upon each of the thre present award winners to come forward and receive their diplomas.

Diana Andone,

Director of the e-learning center at the Politechnica University of Timisoara, Romania.
Diana is an active senior scholar and acknowledged expert in the European e-learning community, with research work and intensive European programme involvement in the field of contemporary ICT enhanced learning developments. She has been appreciated speaker at the EDEN events where she has presented papers at seven conferences.


Laszlo Komaromi,
Gabor Denes Applied University, Hungary
Laszlo has been senior member of the team, responsible for the international relations and European collaboration, at the Gabor Denes University, which is one of the most important distance learning institutions in Central Europe. They have brought to success their young University both in terms of academic-professional activities and the institutional management side.

Laszlo Komaromi has been an active and committed member of EDEN for over 15 years. He is a regular speaker and has presented papers at many EDEN conferences. Finally, he has also contributed to the good partnership with EDEN in several EU Projects.

Fabio Nascimbeni,
Director, MENON Network, Belgium
The MENON network has been for a long while important member and collaborator in EDEN.
Fabio, being responsible for the management and research co-ordination and European programme involvement in MENON, has been an effective and open partner. He has been working with EDEN in several strategically important joint European initiatives.

Fabio presented several excellent papers and contributed to workshops at most EDEN conferences in the last decade.