Dear all, In all respect to the posters who gave their opinion, as I review the posts so far, I have so say I think we can do better than this discussion now. It looks as though we have no guidelines, no mean to help the discussion go beyond single preferences or opinions. While it is certainly interesting to know what everyone think about the benefits of going to either of the proposed venues, we have to find out about very basic and specific questions about those venues. I am sorry to put it so bluntly but we are not getting close to this at present time. Only to make things clear, and since I have been working as closely as I could with Hong Phuc on Day 0 — we have spent a couple of hours together and although it was quick I can tell you it was intense and we have reviewed the major aspects of the organisation while we were still in Brussels — so she could put together a strong bid, I find the Vietnam bid very interesting and worth to be fully analysed in the light of the proposed guidelines. Hong Phuc is enthusiastic and is out of doubt a solid organiser. If, at the end of the process we decide to go to Vietnam, I will be more than happy and I will work as hard as I can to help and assist remotely as I do it since LGM 2. I have to say also that I completely trust the Brasil bid to be as strong, once they will have put together their plans, even if I didn’t have the chance to talk to them so far. I don’t expect anybody to be sorry if in the end if we don’t go to Montreal. I have put the Montreal bid on the table because I think we need it. Trust me, I also like to be on the participant’s seat. I could have said from the start Montreal is not in for 2011. And we could end up like in 2009 asking ourselves where to go after both Singapore and Amsterdam proposals failed. So I put Montreal as an official bid for 2011 and you can even consider it a permanent bid as well ! But we have to know ahead of time. Not at the last minute. Can we make the Montreal bid better according to the guidelines, certainly. Provided we have time to do it, yes. People have to realise that 2009 was all done in a hurry. The C-Plan becoming the A-Plan in the most confusing way. This is certainly one thing LGM doesn’t need and we want to avoid that to happen again. This is why we have put the guidelines together and we want to make sure that we can answer those points BEFORE making a binding decision. This is also why I strongly believe in a 2-year process. That said, and no matter how great the bids are and how strong is the commitment from the local teams and how much we’d all love to travel to any end of the world, we still need to gather the information and this is the only thing we are asking now. We have put together the guidelines in order to help make a decision based on facts and based on past years’ experience. These guidelines were established in the most possible neutral manner. The guidelines are there to help us make the best possible decision on a venue and they are there at the same time to help any team who wishes to organise LGM anywhere in the world make a strong bid. We could make them more efficient down the road. But in our view they are on target. Can we have answer the questions raised in those guidelines? Louis