Sometime in April 2011, the President of the Croatian Crystallographic Association, Prof. Stanko Popović, informed the members of the Croatian Crystallographic Association Board that the ECA (European Crystallographic Association) had offered us to present our candidacy for the organization of the 29th European Crystallographic Congress in Croatia. We were all a little hesitant. Organizing such an important, large event requires a lot of time, knowledge, and experience with similar meetings. After lively correspondence, the Board unanimously decided that the Croatian Crystallographic Association should undertake this great undertaking. At the extended meeting of the Croatian Crystallographic Association Board on May 23, 2011, key decisions were made, and members of the organizational, programmatic, and, at that time, most important candidacy committee for ECM29 were appointed. Marija Luić was elected as the chairwoman of ECM29. This formally began the procedure, and with this meeting, the “point of no return” was actually crossed. If we were politicians, we would certainly call this meeting historic. We announced the Committee’s decision via the HKZ mailing list and were immediately overwhelmed by positive, I would even say enthusiastic, reactions from Community members. Many immediately offered their selfless help in lobbying our influential crystallographer friends across Europe. The candidacy committee was immediately faced with its first major task after its establishment – it had to select a PCO (professional congress organizer) in a short period of time, i.e., an agency to lead the organization of ECM29. We did not know where to start or how to proceed. However, the job was done in record time by two brilliant secretaries – Ana Šantić (secretary of the organizing committee) and Marijana Đaković (secretary of the candidacy committee). They found two reputable agencies that professionally organize large scientific and other conferences and arranged meetings with them for us. However, after the meetings, we were not much wiser. Both agencies and their offers had their pros and cons. The choice was not easy, and besides, we were aware that it was a big money-making venture. That is why we decided to organize a special meeting of the Nomination Committee and invite both agencies to introduce themselves to us with a short (ten-minute) presentation, followed by questions from the members of the Nomination Committee. The meeting was held at the IRB, in the OKB seminar, in the IV wing, on Friday, July 1, 2011. Both presentations were accompanied by almost 45 minutes of lively discussion and numerous questions from curious members of the Nomination Committee. After the presentations and discussions, a secret vote of 12 members of the Nomination Committee followed (Darko Tibljaš apologized for being on a business trip). The votes were opened and counted publicly. The winner, convincingly, was the agency Top Congress Management (TCM) from Rovinj, which was introduced by its director, Mr. Milan Čupić. Immediately after the election, we invited the representatives of the winning team into the room, congratulated them, and agreed on the upcoming activities.
And the real work, with the successful selection of the agency, has actually just begun. Given that most crystallographers are going on a well-deserved vacation on July 20th, and that the candidacy presentation is already scheduled for August 25th, it was necessary to prepare the complete candidacy documentation in the next two weeks, which includes the so-called Bid document and the MS-PowerPoint presentation that I will present to the councilors at the ECA Council meeting in Madrid. Most of us have encountered the term bid document for the first time. This is a real book that should provide detailed information about our country, its tourism, transport, political and economic potentials and characteristics, as well as the host city, the congress center, the hotel offer, the national crystallographic association, and much more. This document is distributed to all members of the ECA Council, who, based on the information in it and the presentation itself, make a decision and cast their vote. Moreover, ECA advised that the complete documentation should be submitted no later than 10 days before the start of the World Crystallographic Congress in Madrid, i.e., by August 12, 2011. We divided the tasks and got to work. Ana Šantić prepared the part related to social activities, Zoran Štefanić the part related to the congress center itself, Željko Skoko is in charge of the transport connections of Rovinj and Croatia with the rest of Europe, Mirjana Bijelić collected information about the possibilities for organizing excursions, and Mario Cetina about the special benefits that we will offer to students and doctoral candidates. Jasminka Popović, the efficient treasurer of the organizing committee, tirelessly put together the budget for several scenarios, optimistic and less optimistic, while I devoted myself to preparing the presentation. Stella Čupić and Milan Čupić from TCM did a great job in preparing the Bid Document – from collecting and selecting the data sent to them by our colleagues from the Committee, to the final make-up and binding itself. Prof. Stanko Popović lobbied tirelessly during that time. I am not sure, but based on the correspondence available to me, it appears that Prof. Popović sent at least a hundred electronic letters to our friends across Europe. In addition, we left Prof. Popović with the demanding task of coordinating with the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts. The second meeting of the Bid Committee was held at the same place and time, exactly a week later, on Friday, July 8, 2011. It was already clear that the work was progressing slowly but surely. I presented the first rough version of the Madrid presentation, which received a lot of criticism. I realized that I had to change a lot. It is good to consult and talk, I concluded for the umpteenth time. We were no less detailed and sharp in our consideration of the first version of the Candidacy Book presented to us by Stella Čupić. After the discussion, we divided the tasks and parted ways. We had a working weekend and a busy week ahead of us, because the final versions of both documents had to be prepared for the next meeting, on Friday.
That week, Marijana (Đaković), secretary of the candidacy committee, arranged a meeting for us with Mr. Račić from the Croatian Tourist Board. The people from the CNTB proved to be extremely accommodating. They immediately got in touch with their Madrid representative office and arranged the delivery of several pallets of promotional materials to equip the stand. The operational work was taken over by Stella and Milan from TCM, in agreement with the CNTB office in Madrid, and Marijana and I were left to choose the materials we wanted on the stand. Great. The last meeting of the ECM29 Rovinj 2015 Coordination Committee was held again on Friday, July 15, 2011, at the same place. I presented the final version of the presentation. This time, I received more praise; it seemed to me that most were satisfied. I particularly charmed those present with the three Croatian hearts at the end, and, honestly, that was what I was counting on. I somehow thought, if it worked with the hearts of the members of the coordination committee, why not with the councilors of the ECA Council? And so it did, and the three hearts have since found their place in the Candidacy Book and have become an informal logo for our candidacy. Zoran (Štefanić) helped me by creating several great slides. The floor plan of the old tobacco factory, as well as the Google Map showing the location of Rovinj and the congress center there, is excellent. Jasminka (Popović) and I used an iterative process to develop an efficient, simple MS Excel calculator for the ECM29 budget projection, which proved extremely practical in finalizing several budget scenarios. The candidacy book, still in electronic form, also took final shape. A letter from the relevant ministry and from the President of the Republic was missing. With Ana’s (Ana Šantić) intervention, we received a letter of support from the Istrian prefect and, thanks to the TCM agency, from the mayor of Rovinj. There were only a few days left for these two important letters of support. The President of the Program Committee, Dubravka Matković-Čalogović, was tasked with “landing” the Office of the President, and Darko Tibljaš and the Chair of ECM29, Marija Luić, agreed to deal with the Ministry. President Josipović soon sent us a letter of support. We were relieved. The Ministry of Science, Education, and Sports, however, proved to be a tough nut to crack. We attacked from all directions, institutionally and through private contacts. When we had already lost all hope, we were informed that a letter, signed by the State Secretary, was waiting for us at the Ministry’s gate. I rushed to obtain the letter and submitted it to the IRB. But when I read it, it became clear to me that we could not include such a letter in the documentation. Namely, the Ministry of Science, Education, and Sports had replaced the Croatian Crystallographic Society with Croatica Chemica Acta! After a short thought, we concluded that they were confused by the identical English acronym of our association and our best chemistry journal. We agreed then (and accepted) that the efforts to get a letter of support from the Ministry were simply unnecessary. And decided to submit documents for candidacy without him. So the people from TCM, at the beginning of August, finished editing the Candidacy Book and sent it for binding.
The Congress itself in Madrid began on Monday, August 22. ECA reserved a stand for us, which we lavishly decorated with posters, signs, promotional material, Croatian flags, and bags of lavender, so that the “Mediterranean as it once was” smelled for about ten meters around. The stand itself became a kind of headquarters for the small Croatian delegation in Madrid. We gathered there in the morning, agreed on strategy and tactics, and solved problems that arose along the way. In the first two days of the congress alone, we distributed more than a thousand pieces of various promotional materials. Our opponents, the Swiss, had no stand at all. We lobbied tirelessly. We received unwavering support from colleagues from Slovenia, Serbia, Macedonia, Ukraine, Italy, Poland, South Africa, and many others. The presentation is scheduled for the ECA Council meeting on August 25 at 1:00 p.m. I was moderately nervous, but I knew that we had really done everything we could. Stella and Milan from TCM prepared a package of materials for each councilor, which, in addition to promotional tourist brochures and DVDs, also contained a really nicely designed Candidacy Book, and a copy of the IUCr NewsLetters, which, in its latest issue, if circumstances allow, brought an extensive overview of crystallography in Croatia. We covered the tables in front of the meeting hall with tourist brochures of Rovinj, and our flags were everywhere. Our opponents had none of that. The presentations were held at the end of the meeting, first ours, and then the Swiss one. Ours went great, with a standing ovation, while the Swiss one was clearly less well prepared, and people were leaving the hall during that presentation. That encouraged us a lot. However, due to the exhaustive agenda, we postponed the discussion and voting to the next meeting on August 27 at the same place. We did not like this, because the only representative of Macedonia at the congress in Madrid, who had unequivocally supported our candidacy, had to leave the day before the vote. In the meantime between those two meetings, Prof. Tone Meden, the Slovenian representative, arrived. We feverishly counted the votes and considered all the scenarios – from the darkest to the victorious ones. Before the vote itself, my opponent and I were allowed to address the gathering with a few sentences. I decided to reiterate our greatest assets. I emphasized that we took the candidacy seriously, and prepared and submitted it on time, which showed both seriousness and respect for the ECA. I did not emphasize this, but it was understood that the same could not be said of our opponents, who prepared their candidacy at the last minute and submitted it an hour and a half before the deadline. Then I reminded everyone that for the organization of this event, we received support from the highest political office in our country, from the President of the Republic himself, and that the President’s letter was included in the Nomination Book. And finally, I reminded them that Croatia, despite the long tradition of crystallography and great achievements in that field, has never hosted a large crystallographic gathering and that their trust and the organization of ECM29 in our country would be a great incentive for the development of our crystallography, natural sciences, and science in general. I don’t even need to say how excited we were before the vote itself. The ECA secretary, Petra Bombicz, distributed the ballots to all councilors. On each ballot, there were only the names of the two candidate countries: “Croatia” and “Switzerland”. Each voter, and there were 29 of them, had to circle their choice. Prof. Kuzel managed the operation of collecting ballots and counting votes. Marijana and I watched the stacks of ballots tensely, and it seemed to us that the counting was taking a very long time. However, it was clear that one of the two candidates had received an overwhelming majority of the votes. We will never know the official results, but if I counted correctly, the smaller pile had only 3 ballots (out of 29). Now all that was left was to hear from the chairman, Santiago Garcia-Granda, “whose” this larger pile was. In a calm voice, he said, “We have a winner. The 29th European Crystallographic meeting will be held in Croatia.”