After a successful first International ODRworkshop in June 2003 (Edinburgh in conjunction with ICAIL 2003), with over 40 people attending, the second was held in Bologna in 2005 (in conjunction with ICAIL) and that same year in Brussels the third (this time in conjunction with JURIX 2005) was held. For an overview, see http://odrworkshop.info.
This fourth edition moves for the first time to the US. At the first ODRworkshop Colin Rule wrote on my request some nice words in his own book. I actually quoted from it last year, in the introduction to the special ODR issue of the Dutch journal Computerrecht, “One day our visions will come true” (see http://pubs.cli.vu/pub291.php).
I will do it again since he also wrote “hope to host you in the States soon”. I am very glad that now the ODRworkshop is held at the best imaginable venue: the premises of eBay. Colin Rule moved there some time ago, and is doing a great job trying to handle over 30 million conflicts each year. The other organizer, John Zeleznikow, has been the initiator of these workshop series, as was recalled in the introduction of the AI & Law special issue on ODR.
As the table of contents shows the program is again of high quality.
And, with authors from a wide range of countries (e.g., France,
Netherlands, USA, Australia, UK, Brazil, Spain). For the first time we
will have some presentations at a distance. Fully in spirit with the
objective of ODR, we should actually not have a physical meeting at
all. This we will keep for one of the future workshops, let’s see this
fourth one as a dress rehearsal for distance communication.