The 13th Baltic Development Forum Summit and the European Commission’s 2nd Annual Forum on the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region was held in Gdansk, Poland, 24-26 October under the title “New Ambitions for the Baltic Sea Region”. This year’s conference gathered ca. 750 participants, during which 126 questionnaires were conducted with our participants – representing approximately 17% of all participants. The organisers would like to thank everyone who participated in the questionnaires, and all the responses and comments will be taken into consideration when planning future events in 2012.
The overall responses regarding the conference were very positive – an overwhelming amount of respondents viewed the conference as a success. The conference covered the current political and economic situation and the main area of interest for respondents was the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region. The most popular sessions this year were Setting Targets for the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region and Regional Identity and Region Branding. The main reason for participation was to network and the Handbook was considered to be very useful. A vast amount of respondents viewed the service of the organisers of the conference very positively and found the choice of venue to be excellent. Also the more informal parts of the conference – the BDF Gala Dinner and Gdansk Shipyard Dinner – were rated highly.