2012 Autumn Conference in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, October 25 – October 26

The historical city of Amsterdam was the venue for the 2012 Fall conference of IMSA. It took place on Thursday October 25th and Friday October 26th and was hosted by EPC Search, the IMSA partner for the Netherlands.

Amsterdam was founded 1275 with a dam in the river Amstel. Hence the name Amsterdam.
The city developed rapidly as a center of commerce in the following centuries. Share trading was actually invented in Amsterdam with the first public trading of the shares of the VOC (United East Indian Company). Currently the city has approx. 800,000 inhabitants with 160 different nationalities.
Dam Square is the oldest address in the heart of the historical, but still very vibrant, city center.
The grand hotel Krasnapolsky is located on Dam Square and in this hotel the IMSA members came together for their meeting.

Almost all members of IMSA attended the meeting. The first day was the member meeting. During this meeting an open exchange of business opportunities, international projects, threats and challenges took place. All individual members presented their country and business. Furthermore we had the opportunity to listen to a dynamic presentation by Quentin van Ballegooie, Managing Director from JB Systems (Major customer for EPC Search, Netherlands). Quentin presented his expectation from a client’s perspective for international executive search partnership

Eva Carloni and Petra Johnsson from Trust Partner Malmö AB, Sweden, Kathleen Duffy and Ann Sylvia from the Duffy Group, United States and Per Stable from Core Competence, Denmark presented their companies and where welcomed to IMSA through a unanimous vote
With the further expansion of the network, IMSA has created an even better foundation to serve its international customers by offering global services with professional local expertise.
The meeting was concluded by a floating dinner in the evening on the famous Amsterdam canals.

The second day of the meeting was spent on a tour of the historical city centre, a visit to the Royal Palace and the Heineken Brewery. On the Friday evening we attended a stand-up comedian performance with a show on the upcoming American presidential election.

The next meeting will be hosted by our Italian partners and will take place on May 23rd and 24th 2013.