Following successful meetings in Lisbon and Toronto in 2004 and 2006, Elsevier will be running the 3rd International Conference on Engineering Failure Analysis (www.icefa.elsevier.com) in the beautiful town of Sitges in July 2008. Sitges is situated on the coast of Catalunya, Spain, just a short distance from Barcelona International Airport.

I am putting together a proposal in response to NSF's Engineering Virtual Organizations solicitation regarding what I call Open Source Publishing.  The proposal can be found (and edited if you setup an account) here.  I would encourage you to register and edit if you're interested.  All revisions are saved so there is no risk of messing something up.  The proposal is fairly unstructured at this point and consists

The 2nd Nanostructures conference covers all aspects of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology dealing with materials synthesis, modeling and applications. Special topics include:

• Nanoparticles and Quantum Dots
•  Nanotubes and Nanowires
•  Nanocoatings
• Nanostructured Materials
• Nanoporous Materials
• Nanocomposites
• Nanocomputation and Modeling

Professor Graeme Milton will be awarded the 2007 Prager medal from the Society of Engineering Science for his work on solid mechanics.  The medal will be handed out at the 44th Annual Technical Meeting of the Society of Engineering Science (SES2007) to be held between October 21 and 24, 2007 at College Station, Texas.

The report about the iMechanica get-together with the McMat 2007 is definitely exciting, because we have found a community beyond the usual professional conferences we are familiar with.  Besides, we may have more, if not less, common interests and languages through this coordinated and yet diversified group with thousands of members in different places of this world.  It is indeed exciting to meet as friends you make from the Internet, except it is professionally:-)