Approved by the Executive Committee 30 October 2003

The International Union has the task to encourage and develop the interchange of experience between leather technologists and chemists worldwide by increasing the collaboration between member societies. One way in which this aim can be accomplished is to hold congresses at regular intervals, according to article 17 of the Statutes and articles 19 and 20 of the Internal Regulations, the aim being to further progress in the application of leather chemistry and technology and the related sciences to leather manufacture and in contacts between the member societies.

Congresses are held every two years. These biennial congresses are normally held in a county selected by the Executive Committee with a minimum time gap of four years prior to the Congress, after careful consideration of the various invitations received from member societies. The detailed organisation of the Congress is the responsibility of the Host Society whose invitation has been accepted, but the Executive Committee is to be kept fully informed through the Secretary/Treasurer, the IULTCS President and at the Executive Committee meetings where the Host Society holds a chair as a guest.

In Europe, Asia or America, Congresses are encouraged to take place immediately before or after major leather fairs, so that members can participate in both events. It is therefore important that the Host Societies contact the organisers of the fairs in order to co-ordinate dates. Since the fairs are continuously changing dates without regard for our Congress, it is important to maintain contact with the fairs and seek repeated confirmation of the dates.

The Host Society is free to determine the final dates for the Congress suitable to the climate and availability of appropriate conference facilities. It is essential that the Host Society inform the secretary of each Member Societies of the dates of the Congress at least two years in advance in order that every member of Member Societies can have sufficient time to make arrangements to participate in the Congress.

Host Societies of a Congress are obliged to keep the Executive Committee fully informed of their progress and activities. The Executive Committee retains the right to cancel a Congress if there is no knowledge of the activities or inadequate communication with the Host Society.

The programme of the Congress consists of four parts:

1. The Heidemann Lecture. A plenary lecture of 30 - 45 minutes, preferably on a topic related to fundamental collagen research, shall be held in honour of Professor Eckhardt Heidemann. This lecture is usually scheduled during the first morning of the Congress.

2. The Technical Programme. The presentation of the technical programme of the Congress is normally carried out in one conference room. The organisation of the details of the scientific technological programme is the responsibility of the Host Society.

3. A Visual Display Section. A separate area is set aside for visual display presentations that can be visited by the delegates during coffee breaks and the end of the lectures. A specific time should be allotted during the Congress when visual display authors will be present for discussion with delegates. To ensure good access for delegates, the displays must be located close to the coffee facilities, preferably in the same room.
To raise the profile of these visual display presentations it is suggested time be allowed in the main technical programme for each presentation to have 5 minutes to summarise the work on display. This aspect must be strictly controlled and no questions would be allowed.

4. Delegates Meetings. These meetings are to be organised by the host society and conducted by the Executive Committee of the IULTCS. Delegates meetings are to be scheduled without conflict with the technical programme. There are two meetings scheduled but the second is seldom needed.

Co-operation with the Executive Committee.

The President, Vice President and Secretary/Treasurer of the Union must be kept continuously informed about the progress of the preparations of a Union Congress. To encourage a good interchange of information, four years prior to the Congress a representative of the Host Society organising committee shall become a full member of the IULTCS Executive Committee until the Congress is held. Each year at Executive meetings the Host Society shall inform the Executive Committee about progress. At least twelve months before the Congress date, the officers of the Executive Committee shall hold, if possible, a joint meeting with the organising committee of the Host Society to discuss and confirm the proposed agenda and facilities of the Congress.

While the detailed planning rests with the Host Society, the Executive Committee as a whole is pleased to support the Host Society with any difficulties that can become apparent during the preparation of the Congress. This is particularly so in relation to the selection of lectures, which will be discussed further below.

The President and Secretary/Treasurer shall be exempted from payment of the registration fees (fees for social events excluded) of Union Congresses. The organising committee of a Union Congress shall make available to the Union a premium of 30 US Dollars for every participant who has paid the normal Congress registration fee.

The Technical Programme

The main activity of the Congress is the lecture programme, which consists of lectures on scientific and technological subjects relating to leather and their discussion. This portion of the guidelines is concerned solely with this scientific technological programme. It summarises experiences gathered at previous conferences and is intended to ease the work of the Host Society without limiting its initiative.

Announcement of Lectures.

Every member of a Member Society of the Union has the right to propose a lecture for the Congress. In order to obtain an idea of the number of lectures in sufficient time, the Host Society must inform all Member Societies of the finalised date of the Congress, together with an invitation to propose lectures at least one year prior to the start of the Congress and preferable at the preceding Congress, since these invitations have still to be relayed on to the individual members. If the Host Society plans to focus the lectures within certain themes, this must be made clear at this stage. Such focus should only be selected for a portion of the scientific technological programme and sufficient room must be left for free choice of the themes.

In addition, it is recommended that all technical journals be informed of the Congress details at the same time in order to encourage participation in the Congress. A list of Technical journals in Member Countries can be obtained from the Secretary of the Union. During the further preparations for the Congress, the technical journals in the member Countries should continue to be informed. In general, too little attention has been given to advertising Congresses and it is a very important that action is taken to promote Congresses. Additionally internet websites should be used to advertise the Congress and an e-mail address should be provided so that members and non-members can obtain information about the Congress. It is important that those internet sites are well advertised through the IULTCS internet page and other commercial pages related to the leather industry.

The closing date for receipt of proposed lecture title should be a maximum of nine months before the beginning of the Congress. Lecture proposals must be received before this date, together with the subject and short abstract (maximum 250 words) in the Congress languages (English + one other, if applicable). The translations must be undertaken by the member offering the lecture thus insuring that the content is correctly reflected in all the versions. The abstract should give a good summary of the content of the lecture, since the content of the abstract will determine whether it will be selected for a lecture presentation.

Selection of lectures

After the closing date, the Host Society should present the abstracts to an internationally selected Scientific and Technical Committee for a professional vetting of the lectures. The lectures may be on fundamental scientific topics or on technological themes close to practice.

Practicing tanners are particularly encouraged to offer lectures and thus participate actively in the work of the Union. The Committee studying the abstracts should not select more than two oral lectures for each presenter and should ensure a good balance of topics and presentations that reflect the world wide leather industry interests. Presenters submitting more than two lectures should be encouraged to make some of them as visual displays with a different author available for each visual display.

Care must be taken in selection that a sufficiently high standard of lectures is maintained. The lecture programme reflects the ideals of the Union and it is important therefore not to accept lectures which do not meet sufficiently high standards of scientific content or degree of novelty. The results of work to be reported must not be published before the Congress. Equally, lectures that refer to test methods other than IULTCS official methods, or the equivalent ISO or EN methods, should be rejected.

Lectures advertising or dealing solely with the use of proprietary products are not to be accepted.

It should be clearly noted in instructions and guidelines issued to authors that presentations should only contain generic names and are not to refer to commercial product names during lectures. A suitable sized company logo in the corner of the slide and a list of commercial products at the end of the presentation is allowed. Commercial presentations shall be avoided in the oral lecture session.

Should the host country for understandable reasons have difficulties or doubts about refusing offers of lectures, the Executive Committee is prepared to assist by nominating official referees.

Preparation of lectures

The members of the Union who have offered lectures should be informed shortly after the closing date, and at the least 7 months before the Congress, whether their lecture has been accepted into the Congress programme. The members must then submit the finalised text of their lecture to the Host Society at a time nominated by the Host Society. The Executive Committee proposes that in keeping up with changing technology, a printed version of the abstracts and a CD-Rom (pdf format) version of the presentations should be prepared and made available to all attending at registration for the Congress. Because of the need to prepare the texts for the CD-ROM they must be available at least 3 months before the beginning of the Congress.

The abstracts must be made available by the Host Society before the beginning of the Congress. The abstracts should be printed in English and if possible in the other Congress language, if applicable. A list of the titles and authors for all the Technical and Visual Display presentations should be sent to all registered participants or placed on the Congress website at least 2 months before the beginning of the Congress. This way they are already informed of the contents of the lectures to be available and are in a position to prepare contributions to the discussion. Only when all participants are well prepared will lively discussion ensue.

The text of the lectures will only be submitted in one of the two Congress languages, which the lecturer will use. A CD-ROM containing the submitted text will be given to the participants at the Congress.

The lecturer is not entirely bound to the submitted text and he is free to augment or alter it, if this is possible in the time available to him. In this way, results obtained since the submission of the text can be taken into account. However, the main theme of the lecture as laid down in the abstract must not be altered. The modified manuscript must be handed to the translators in sufficient time.

The decision of what method of printing the abstracts and lectures is to be used belongs to the Host Society, taking into account the above proposals. The Host Society holds the copyright for the submitted texts and after the Congress it has the right to publish the texts in appropriate journals of its choice. The author must not publish the same text of the Congress without the approval of the Host Society. If the Host Society publishes papers from the Congress it shall acknowledge that they were presentations at the IULTCS Congress.

In order to reduce costs, it is helpful that the lectures are submitted in a clean text on white paper or by electronic means in a word processor programme. The number of lines per page, format and font size and width of line to be stated, so that photo printing or electronic storage can be used. It is essential that the Host Society issues clear guide lines for the setting out of the text as regards headings, names, etc., so that the lecturers produce texts in as uniform a format as possible.

Form of lectures

For each lecture there is normally available a maximum of 15 minutes, followed by 5 minutes for discussion. Exceptions may be made in special cases, for example, for an anniversary lecture, a principal address, or for a presidential address.

Lectures and discussions are held in one of the official accepted languages (English + one additional, if applicable) and they and the subsequent discussion are simultaneously translated into the other official accepted language.

Lectures must be formulated in such a way that their content can be clearly understood by the translators and by all participants with technical training, irrespective of their specialisation within the leather field. Since the aim is to further the practice of leather manufacture, it is essential that the participants who are practicing leather manufacturers should be able to apply what they hear in their day to day work. Clarity of speech and contents are therefore the primary aims for the presentation. The plea to present the abstracts and lectures properly is especially directed to those lecturers who have to speak in a language other than their mother tongue. Such lectures are often not clear enough and even contain incorrect figures of speech. It is therefore recommended that in completing manuscripts, help is sought from a colleague whose mother tongue is the language concerned.

Lectures may be illustrated through slides, overhead projection, or by using computer generated presentations via projectors. Experience has been that slides and projector presentations often give rise to difficulties. Consequently, the following rules for the preparation have been drawn up:

1 Tables must be legible; they must therefore not be written by hand or typewriter, but in a large format of such a size that they are legible even from the back rows of the lecture halls.

2 The slides presented must easily readable. Each table must only contain limited data; otherwise the audience cannot absorb the content sufficiently quickly.

3 Except for a company logo in the corner, neither the tables, nor figures and machine drawings may include names or symbols of firms, trademarks or trade names and must be completely neutral and free from advertising. The same applies, of course, to the lecture itself.

All details of the required form of the lectures and tables must be a communicated to the lecturers, when they are informed of the inclusion or their lectures in the programme of the Congress.

Programme and conduct of the lecture session:

The official opening of the Congress usually takes place on the morning of the first day in the presence of the accompanying persons. It includes the addresses of greeting, the presentation of any honours, and any special lecture.

As has been the custom for many years, it is strongly recommended that the organising committee requests all the lecturers, chairmen of sessions, translators, and the Executive Committee to attend a meeting before the start of the Congress. The organiser can use this occasion to repeat in detail the exact guidelines for the conduct of the lecture programme, the facilities available, the maintenance of the set times and that no commercial names are to be used, etc.

The lecturers should be reminded again not to speak too quickly, so that the translators are able to keep up with them. Lecturers should be clearly informed that chairmen of the session are responsible for keeping time and have the right to stop lectures that are over time and to refuse to allow questions if insufficient time is available. The lecturers should be told at this stage that if they have slides with small print or more than 25 slides then they would have problems with people not understanding their talk and with going overtime. The lecturers should be told clearly that they should consider revising their presentation.

The following points should also be considered in planning the programme:

Rooms should be made available for possible meetings that any of the Commissions (IUP, IUC, IUE, IUF) may wish to hold and which should take place before the meeting of the Council of Delegates. Official IU test methods are often proposed for approval at the Council of Delegates meeting.
A permanent room should be available for the Executive Committee to meet participants and hold meetings which may be held the day before the Congress, a second meeting during the Congress and a third meeting at the end of the Congress.

Two meetings of the Council of Delegates are to be included, the first at the end of the first complete Congress day and the second on the last day. (Usually, only the meeting on the last day is held). Each Member Society appoints official delegates to attend the Council of Delegates meeting according to the Statutes of the IULTCS.

The Host Society should produce an exactly timed programme for the lectures and visual display lectures. It is helpful to group together lectures from the same or similar areas to form a half-day or full day symposium. Where lectures are held in parallel sessions, the topics running in parallel should not cover similar areas. The programme giving times should be published in the Congress website and if possible in the technical press in all member countries 4 months before the Congress, so that the participants who are unable to present for the whole Congress can made appropriate plans.

The lecture sessions are best conducted by chairpersons, who should be experienced people drawn from different countries. The chairmen should be selected when the lecture programme is being finalised and their names should be listed on the official programme. The chairmen should change each half-day. The chairman of each half-day session is responsible for keeping the programme to time and it is helpful to warn the lecturers 2 to 3 minutes before the end of their lecture time (15 minutes) by means of a light or other signal. (i.e. paper cards of yellow colour indicating that there are 5 minutes left and paper cards of red colour meaning that time is over). When the 15 minutes have elapsed, the lecture must be concluded, so that there is always sufficient time for discussion; the short time set aside for discussion must not be further curtailed.

Should the lecture be cancelled, it is preferable an interval should take place unless the change in programme has been announced to all Delegates prior to the session.

It is obvious that lecturers who have cancelled their lecture for any reason, must inform the Congress office as soon as possible. To avoid cancellations of lectures it is strongly recommended that approximately one month prior to the Congress all lecturers are contacted to re-confirm their attendance. If some lecturers have not registered to attend the Congress then they should be requested to complete registration immediately or their lecture will be withdrawn. The Congress office should publish such alterations centrally and on the doors of the lecture rooms.

A certificate signed by the President of the Union and representatives of the organising committee of the Host Society shall be handed to speakers and chairman of sessions. A certificate of assistance should be handed to delegates. The precise layout of such certificates is left to the discretion of the organising committee.

The Host Society shall provide a list of registered delegates names, their company or organisation name and country of origin. This list should be made available to all delegates who register at the start of the Congress.