The University of Economics in Yekaterinburg/Russia for the first time organized an International Student Competition by the name of EURASIA More than 40 countries (even from Africa and the US) gave their input to the final three-days-meeting. There were different workshops for teams led by students and supported by professors as experts; others fought individually in the defence of dissertations.

For the third time the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center organized its Retail Asia Forum which is run together with the Retail Technology Expo and the Retail Design & In-Store Marketing Expo.The opening ceremony party consisted out of Ms Joey Lam/ Tourism Commission, Mr. Anthony Lau/Hong Kong Tourism Board, Mr. Matthew Pearce/Diversified Events Hong Kong, Mr. Antony Chan/Hong Kong Interior Design Association, Mr. Michael Chan/Hong Kong Security Association, Prof.Bernd Hallier/EHI/EuroShop, Mr. P.M. Lai, MH, JP/Quality Tourism Services Association, Ms. Anna Lin/GS1 Hong Kong and Ms Ruth Yu/Hong Kong Retail Management Association.

EHI Retail Institute from its roots is supporting food quality and food security. Systems to be developed under the guidance of EHI are Orgainvent Tracing/Tracking and GlobalGAP . Via the European Retail Academy virtual networks like AgriBusinessForum and Environment Retail Management are build up.

One of the new links is the Food Transparency EU-Project and the access of academia to the electronic journal “International Journal on Food System Dynamics” . It allows free access to articles and supports easy communication within the scientific community. The journal invites papers from the scientific community identified in its Web-site www.centmapress.org It is backed by an international editorial board and by the “International Forum on System Dynamics and Innovation in Food Networks” . It will publish 4 issues per year and assure a wide distribution of its articles within the scientific community.
 

Since 18 years the German food-magazine LebensmittelPraxis is celebrating its annual event „Supermarket of the year“ with six categories. About 150 markets each year apply for an award (LP-Jury on photo by Martin Kämper/www.presseteam.tel). This benchmarking-process has a sustainable positive effect for the retail-sector.

After Vienna/Austria the second EU-Hearing about the topic „ Establishing a provisional network for anticipating skill needs in the commerce sector in Scandinavia and the Baltic States“ will take place in Helsinki/Finland on June 15th 2010 (Programme). Participants will discuss again

• Status Quo Content of Vocational Training
• Innovation of Vocational Training
• National Coordination of Vocational Training
• International Coordination of Vocational Training