The Venice conference represented a historic moment in the CISS Millennium Series of conferences that was launched at the threshold of the new century in Paris. The new century began with an awareness that we were entering an era of tremendous change and that we would need to understand and adapt to the reality of a world that would require us to re-examine our assumptions about the international order. Even as we faced the prospect that many challenges awaited us in the new century, there was a fundamental belief in the potential of mankind to work together to meet these challenges. The underlying sense of hope and optimism about the emerging new world order set the tone for what was to become an exciting scholarly dialogue. The mutual desire to understand a changing world has, over the past decade, brought together a diverse group of scholars, policy makers, as well as representatives of the corporate and military communities to engage in a stimulating cross-professional and interdisciplinary discourse. Following the inaugural Millennium conference in Paris (1999) the series continued to be held in memorable locations including: Washington D.C. (2000), Heidelberg (2001), Brugge (2002), Salzburg (2004), The Hague (2006), Bucaco (2007), Paris (2008), Potsdam (2009) and culminated in Venice (2010).

The theme of this year’s meeting, "Global Cooperation: Alliances, Institutions, and International Relations," was an effort to explore the scope and complexity of the contemporary challenges and opportunities confronting the global community, as well as underscore the need to construct an effective policy framework to deal with the increasingly large number of transnational problems. Reflecting the increased interest in the conferences, a record number of proposals were received this year. In order to maintain the intimate character of these meetings, the acceptance rate for the Venice conference was kept to 30% of the proposals received. This was designed to enable us to maintain the sense of community that is characteristic of these intellectual retreats. Participants representing 99 universities, institutions, and companies, from 27 countries, attended the highly successful conference held in of one of the most unique cities of the world. It was a privilege to organize the meeting and a pleasure to give the Millennium Award for the outstanding paper presented at the 2009 Potsdam conference by a younger scholar to Irma Slomczynska of Marie Curie-Sklodowska University, Poland. The conference sponsors were most generous in their support and encouragement and it was great to share the excitement of this historic event with all who were present.

Next year, CISS will be combining with the WISC meeting in Porto, Portugal, just as we have in previous years with the CEEISA, meeting in Budapest (2003), and the first WISC conference in Istanbul(2005). I hope you will join us in Porto for what promises to be another exciting event.