Just before the sky clears one very early morning in Rio (left); Fabio Gomes
emphasising his point watched by Luciana Castro, Harriet Kuhnlein (right)

Access Rio2012 website here

The Rio2012 team reports. How are conferences organised? You may have the impression that the programmes for international nutrition meetings are determined by a small group of eminences meeting in private, supposedly supported by a long list of other eminences who lend their names to the occasions without being called on to do much if anything. That's not how things are done in Brazil, as Fabio Gomes shows in his news story this month on the November CONSEA conference on food and nutrition security held in Salvador de Bahia. The nature, shape, content and philosophy of our Rio2012 congress, masterminded by executive secretary Inês Rugani and a magnificent team of young colleagues from universities in Rio, São Paulo and Brasília, has been agreed as a result of meticulous and innovative consultations, beginning over a year ago.

One of the many special features of Rio2012 is that all speakers are participants in the whole congress, and also that everybody who attends the congress will have every opportunity to participate. The congress is interactive. As part of this democratic approach, speakers are being invited to join in the whole congress. This includes the working groups each of which will progress its business over all three days of the congress.

One final phase has been the week-long meeting of the congress executive committee held in Rio in late October. Committee member Fabio Gomes, also a member of the programme committee, is seen in action above (right). He is being watched by committee members Luciana Castro, professor at the state university of Rio de Janeiro; and programme committee co-convenor Harriet Kuhnlein, professor emerita at McGill University, Montréal, who also is founding director of the global CINE network dedicated to study and protect the nutrition and health of traditional and indigenous populations.