At 2023 IEEE Convene in Panama (August 2023) the IEEE iCON recognition went to the IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference 2022 (EDUCON) held in Tunis, Tunisia. The iCON Recognition celebrates an event demonstrating excellence in innovation, content curation, community-building, and financial stability and growth.

Habib M. Kammoun (IEEE Tunisia Section Chair, IEEE EDUCON 2022 co-chair and R8 Conference Committee Past Chair), Magdalena Salazar Palma (IEEE Region 8 Past Director and Representative of R8 in IEEE EDUCON Steering Committee) and Edmundo Tovar (IEEE Ed. Society jr. Past President and chair of IEEE EDUCON Steering Committee) accepted the iCON recognition presented by past ICC Chair Bin Zhao.

In their presentation Habib M. Kammoun summarized the main achievements of EDUCON 2022 in collaboration with the IEEE Tunisia Section and the IEEE Tunisia Education Chapter. Together with Manuel Castro (2022 Steering Committee Chair), Ilhem Kallel (Conference Chair) and Lobna Hsairi (Technical Program Chair), the organizers had to manage the uncertainty of the post-pandemic achieving an outstanding Technical Program, a significant budget surplus and strong cooperation between Society, Region, Section, Chapter and industry. Organized in hybrid format, a record of 400 participants from 60 countries was obtained, 20% of them onsite, 319 accepted papers published in IEEE Xplore, involving 961 authors from 56 countries.

Edmundo Tovar highlighted that the success of EDUCON 2022 is due in large part to the brilliant leadership of its chairs, but also to the practices over the years of the successive editions as well as the institutional support of the Education Society. EDUCON was the first of the regional flagship conferences of the Education Society, being a successful conference from its inception. The idea for EDUCON arose in a meeting in which prominent members of the Education Society in Amman participated, such as Abdullah Al Zoubi, Michael Auer, Rob Reilly, Russ Meier and Manuel Castro, within the preparation of the IMCL conference in 2008.  

EDUCON practices, Tovar said, have matured over the last 14 years based on a policy of rotation between the main geographical areas of the R8, the creation of governing bodies, Steering and Advisory Committees, having the same service provider in the conference (IAoE (International Association of Online Engineering for 13 years and recently, in 2023 start with Conference Catalysts, LLC) or the definition of general processes at different levels, at a higher level from the Education Society.

Finally Magdalena Salazar mentioned that R8 encourages Societies to collaborate for their conferences organized in Europe, Africa, and Middle East, and EDUCON is one of the four portfolio conferences.

Our thanks to the great support of IEEE MCE, and JOIN US FOR IEEE EDUCON 2024 May 8-11, 2024 in Kos Island, Greece with the theme ”Education in the AI era”.

Edmundo Tovar

EDUCON Steering Committee Chair