ISOCARP Congress Director
Six years and two full terms serving as ISOCARP – International Society of City and Regional Planners Congress Director and Board Member responsible for the ISOCARP World Planning Congress.
When I started after 2013 the Congress was declining in attendance and content, going to as low as 192 attendees and making a loss to ISOCARP. We have built up to the biggest ever events around 500 for the last 4 years, with a record breaking of 700+ in Jakarta, just recently. Moreover we had the largest international audience here in an outside Europe congress with over 280 internationals (compared to 160-180 in other remote locations previously). The quality of content has also significantly improved with many special sessions, speakers and round tables. There has been the ISOCARP Declaration formulated and we discussed the current issues like planning for climate change in Norway last year, and moving the Indonesian capital from Jakarta.
This task involved the need to match different expectations and coordinate many stakeholders, plus being in a different location each year and adding new elements and experimenting. There is always room for improvement, but now the ISOCARP World Planning Congress is a high quality world ranked planning event.
Congress Director in charge of delivery of the ISOCARP Annual World Planning Congress.