Dear Friends,

I have the pleasure and honour of inviting you to Rotterdam for the 37th Annual Meeting of the International Continence Society, which will be held from Monday 20 August to Friday 24 August 2007.

The Local Organising Committee and our PCO Congress Consultants are working hard on preparing a meeting that will be memorable both scientifically and socially. Although I work at the University Medical Centre in Utrecht while Mark Vierhout, the scientific chair, is based at the University Medical Centre St Radboud in Nijmegen, we have selected Rotterdam as the venue for the ICS 2007 Annual Meeting. There are a number of excellent reasons for this choice. Rotterdam is the second largest city in the Netherlands and one of the biggest seaports in the world. Situated on some of Europe's most important waterways, Rotterdam is known in Dutch as "waterstad" (water city). This seems a most appropriate symbolic reference to the regulation of the waterways in the human body! Rotterdam is also a modern city and the only Dutch city with a skyline. Most of its modern architecture emerged after World War II when Rotterdam was recovering from the devastation of bombardment. Today Rotterdam is hot! It is a multicultural, contemporary, cosmopolitan city. Its surroundings offer plenty of opportunities for enjoyable and interesting social and partner programmes, as outlined for you in this publication.

The venue for the meeting is Concert and Congress Centre de Doelen, situated in the heart of Rotterdam, opposite the central train station. De Doelen offers three main areas centred around three auditoriums with a capacity of 1850, 700 and 465, and approximately 20 rooms for workshops and breakout meetings. With a direct skywalk linking de Doelen to the Westin Hotel, the main conference hotel and the conference centre are in fact located under one roof. The conference venue is situated in the main shopping district. Getting around Rotterdam is easy: there is an extensive bus and tram system as well as a subway.

And let us not forget the meeting itself! Preceding the official congress days starting Wednesday 22 August, there will be various educational courses and workshops. As always, your contribution to the Annual Meeting is highly valued, and therefore I invite you all to submit your abstracts at www.icsoffice.org.

Make sure you keep abreast of the latest meeting information by visiting our website www.ics2007.org.

I hope you will come and join us for the 2007 ICS Meeting. See you in Rotterdam! Tot ziens!

Ruud Bosch,
Chair ICS 2007 Annual Meeting