Summer Workshops are proven to be an effective tool to encourage students, young and senior researches to create new research communities. Two summer schools, each lasting 3 days, are organized by Peach with the support from the European FET program Presence II Integrated Projects (IPs).

Following the success of the first summer school held in July 2007 in Santorini, Greece, the second Peach summer school will focus in particular on applications of Presence. We aim to bring together researchers and practitioners from many academic disciplines and industry and stimulate cross disciplinary activities involving presence research and application. European projects FET Presence I & II will provide the conceptual backbone for discussion between researchers scattered across groups worldwide. Many key researchers and practitioners have already expressed their willingness to participate. Therefore, the event is an excellent opportunity to foster Peach objectives, since it is expected that many members of the Presence Community will be present, as well as others not fully aware of the relation of their work with this scientific field.

The fundamental objectives of the Summer School are to:

• promote the Public Understanding of Presence research,
• foster Market interaction,
• establish stable links with Industry players,
• share knowledge and vision future research areas,
• discuss Landscape and Roadmaps for future Presence research.

The instructional level of the school will be appropriate to Master and PhD students, and Presence researchers & experts.

Peach is three year Coordination Action on Presence (ending May 2009) funded by the European Commission and coordinated by Starlab under the Future Emerging Technologies (FET) - Information Society Technology (IST) program nursery of novel and emerging scientific ideas. Our main objective is to stimulate, structure and support the interdisciplinary Presence research community and produce visions and roadmaps for the field.

The 2nd Peach Summer School 2008, entitled: "Presence: Technologies and Applications", will be organized by Peach with the local support of the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, Department of Telecommunications.

Participate! Your presence is valuable for Presence.