On November, 16th 2015 in Gdynia a meeting of the Programme Committee of the 7th edition of the tech-science Conference NATCON 2016 on “Naval Technologies for Defence and Security” was held in the premises of OBR CTM. The Committee consists of representatives of Polish Armed Forces, as well as the most important companies and institutions, operating in the area of military and civilian maritime technology, defence and safety and rescue at sea. The main purpose of the meeting was to determine detailed topics of the conference, which is since 2012 together with the parallel held BALT MILITARY EXPO fair the biggest event dedicated to the subject of maritime technology, utilized in the region of Baltic countries for the purposes of increasing defence and ensuring national security.
Members of the Programme Committee, which is chaired by the President of the Board of CTM, Mr Andrzej Kilian, Ph.D. agreed that the range of topics of NATCON will cover over a dozen sessions, which will be clustered in the three main conference panels, which are: naval combat systems, maritime security system, naval technology exploitation. The aforementioned detailed topics of the Conference will be published on the Conference webpage www.natconference.eu at the end of November 2015. During the meeting candidatures were submitted concerning persons who will be invited to chair some appointed topic sessions. Also accompanying events to the NATCON Conference and the BALT MILITARY EXPO fair were discussed, namely: the conference of the Scientific Circles on “Challenges for security”, as well as the contest on the most innovative speech during the conference, which will traditionally be honoured with a prize in form of a “Crystal Lighthouse”.
The aim of the NATCON Conference is to build an international platform for knowledge exchange between users, the industry and R& D institutions, mainly from Baltic countries. Next year’s 7th edition of the Conference will take place/be held on 20th-22nd June 2016, and once again will be organized in the AMBEREXPO Exhibition & Convention Centre, Gdańsk by CTM, the Polish Naval Academy and Gdańsk International Fair Co. During the last edition around 200 participants from Poland and abroad attended, who presented over 80 papers. They represented more than 50 institutions and companies from 12 countries, such as: Poland, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Sweden, Bulgaria, Italy, Israel, Vietnam, the USA, and Mexico.