 Kura menebis Mark Brown and I'm the director of the National Institute for Digital Learning at Dublin City University, I hope that many of you also know me as the chair of this year's ICDE World Conference on Online Learning. We're really looking forward to the whole team we had here in the NIDL at DCU to welcome you to Dublin in November for what is we think one of the premier conferences this year in one of the most important fields in education right now perhaps one of the key reasons for this brief conference update from just me on this occasion is to remind you of the importance of registering formally registering for the conference the early bird date is the first of July and if you happen to miss that date it's not a disaster you can still register melechau te zahai maitheru. Mesta dess owa, tu te rekaitei te rekaitei i te raha i te plau i te programu ierenu. Nampai anumia ki te rekaitei eau owa, maatcant i te rekaiteiinda though lani i te rekaitei iamia garaatia ngeraia kod i raia, maetcant i te rekaitei i rekaitei na i te rekaitei i rekaitei ndu i ta i raha ndu ndni. Mabia kumisidia, te rekaitei i rekaitei i wadi i kurisiai tainu te rekaitei owa i rekaitei We have over 650 submissions. It's a great response to this year's conference, and we really will be juggling and struggling to get everyone into the programme. Having said that, I do want to emphasise that we have lots of different formats and opportunities in the conference, some great keynotes and plenaries. We have a thing called the Dublin debate a little later in the conference, lots of panel discussions as well to go with the various speakers. A symposia and action labs, and then another interesting format, a fishbowl. If you haven't come across a fishbowl, we'll tell you more about that in another conference update. So just to summarise, really important to get your registration in as soon as possible. Perhaps the other thing I should mention here is that we are really at a dance in our planning for the social and cultural programme. Our conference isn't just about the academic side of things, although we have what we think are some very important questions that we're going to be exploring over the ten sub-themes of the conference under the wider umbrella. As you can see in the banner there are transforming lives and societies. But those conversations can extend over and after the conference, and so we really are hoping that people will take advantage of what Dublin has to offer. The historic Temple Bar District is very short distance from where the convention centre is, right in the heart of Dublin. You can extend those conversations perhaps over again as the traditional Irish beer, or perhaps just a tea or coffee or a soft drink. I guess in summary what I'd like to just finish on, as I touched on previously, we really think that the conference this year, 2019, in the field of online learning, or however we want to describe that, there's going to be a very important occasion for people from all around the world. We have over 50 countries represented in the paper submissions, so people coming from all around the world to help shape the future of online education as we go forward. We know that there was a tremendous challenge facing us in meeting the demand, the global demand for higher education in the wider context of the sustainable development goals. That new technologies offer tremendous potential, and so this conference is one way for us to really look at what we can do for the future and to really help shape that future and take charge of the future. We're looking forward to seeing you in Dublin. I know my colleagues are very keen to meet many of you as soon as possible, and we hope that you're getting excited about the conference too. Cheers.