INTERACT 2011 gathered close to 430 people in sunny Lisboa, Portugal from 5-9 September culminating a non-stop 1 week marathon that saw 2 main conferences, thirteen workshops, six tutorials and four keynote presentations that altogether brought 540 participants to discuss their views on  the design and use present-day to future interactive systems. INTERACT 2011´s main theme was"Building Bridges". And many were built. From the Iberian peninsula many professionals and academicians gathered from September 2 to 4 in Lisboa a singular event called INTERACCION that brought toghether the Portuguese and Spanish communities, just before the main event. Bridges were also built when Industry participants exchanged their view of the world with practicioners, usabuility professionals and academicians in engaging and vibrant dialogues. INTERACT also built bridges across the world -  participants from 43 different countries from around the world attended the main conference. 

The program featured a record number of 112 technical papers selected out of 402 submissions (28% acceptance rate) and 60 short communications selected out of 278 submissions (22% acceptance rate). These numbers represent increases of 12% in volume as reported to 2009, as attested by the 1800+ pages of proceedings printed by Springer LNCS. Indeed such figures are witness to the prominent role and community engagement in the INTERACT event. No less than 800 different reviewers were called upon to select entries from almost 700 submissions to the overall technical program. Outstanding keynote presentations by Mary Czerwinski (MS Research), António Camara (Ydreams), Don Norman (NNG) and Saul Greenberg (U Calgary) served as capstone to this very successful event. INTERACT 2011 is also building bridges between the real and digital realms. The postINTERACT initiative aims at continuing and extending the exchanges past the physical venue to continue the conference online, via vedeo recordings of all technical sessions and debate forums that we hope will continue and enhance the dialogue between authors and the community. 

Some nice photos taken during INTERACT 2011 can now be found on Flickr: www.flickr.com/photos/interact2011/

In pure INTERACT/TC13 tradition the next venue will take place in Cape Town South Africa on September 2013. We hope to see you there!