Speaker 1: Maastricht University is one of the most international universities in the Netherlands, located in the U-region, which means that we have students from the country surrounding us, but actually from all over the world. So 22,000 students and 4,000 staff members. Both our academic staff and our support staff is very much willing to be supportive in organizing your conference here in Maastricht, and not also from within the university, but also our local partners in and around Maastricht are really eager to assist in making the conference the best that you could ever have hoped for.

Speaker 2: Conferences are great platforms to showcase knowledge and to provide opportunities for high-quality networking and the sharing of best practices. Destinations like Maastricht are the ideal places to do just that, combining the best of meeting infrastructure, easy access and high-level expertise covering a wide spectrum of fields, it can create a one-of-a-kind experience for delegates and organizers alike. In this unique knowledge ecosystem, the University of Maastricht is one of the key partners of the Maastricht Convention Bureau.

Speaker 1: For several years on a row now, we are in the top 10 of young universities in the world, which means that if you look at our research output and quality of our education and the impact that we generate, that we belong to that top 10 percentage of universities under the age of 50. The Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences is one of our biggest faculties, and that shows also in the many international conferences that we organize, major health conferences in Maastricht.

Speaker 3: It's great to be able to host this congress, which is the joint congress of the European Association for the Study of Obesity and the International Federation for the Surgery of Obesity Metabolic Chapters, so it's great to host that conference here in Maastricht. And more than 2,000 people are attending, with more than 500 people attending online. I've already received a lot of positive reactions about the venue and the city of Maastricht and I'm confident that a lot of delegates will remember this conference.

Speaker 1: At Maastricht University we are quite well connected, not only of course in our surroundings but also international, being one of the most international universities, which means that if we organize conferences we are able to attract that whole international network to come to Maastricht, but also our local experts here are very much willing to assist in providing your conference bids, because we very much appreciate to organize high-level conferences and seminars from within Maastricht.

Speaker 4: Today we are at the Pain Science in Motion, the fourth symposium congress, which is held here at Crowne Plaza at Maastricht. So in the field of pain, this is the only conference for PhD students to present their work. We want to provide an environment where young researchers have easy access to the knowledge of senior researchers. And when this conference started, seven years ago, it was mainly from the mainland of Europe and we tried to extend, and now we are about 18 countries. So we have people from Brazil, South Africa, Lebanon, Egypt, and so we're quite excited that we have extended the number of people coming from different countries. The Convention Bureau has been a great facilitator to bring us in contact with other partners in order to get this conference going and to have a good conference.

Speaker 1: For many years we work now with the Maastricht Convention Bureau, which is the independent party for us that facilitates and supports you in organizing your conference, knows all the venues, knows all the local partners, where to go, where not to go. And that is also, I would say, a unique asset for Maastricht, that we have a professional organization that supports you in organizing your conference, always high quality. I think Maastricht is really the perfect location to hold your conference. It has all the facilities that you need in a city, but it's also not too big, because of which you get lost and you can't find each other anymore. So during the day you have all the professional conference facilities, and in the evening it's a very historical, beautiful old town with high quality restaurants, all in walking distance, so that you don't have to go with all sorts of local transport to get to your next venue. No, it's all in the vicinity of the location where you have your conference. We very much believe in creating ecosystems with partners, both from business, from local municipalities, from regional province, in order to create as much impact as we can. So it's societal impact, so to speak, so you cannot do that alone as a university. So that means that we invest heavily in, for instance, campuses like the Brightland campuses, where the triple helix is being created with local enterprises, with multinationals, with other knowledge institutions and the university. If you look at the DNA of our university, then we are firmly rooted also locally, which means that whatever we do, we try to explore what the impact is for this region and for this city, whether it's about achieving sustainability goals, whether it's about well-being in the city. So if conference organizers could also assist us in really making that next step to include our local environment, it would be really very much appreciated.