The idea of creating the European Dependable Computing Conference (EDCC) was born at the moment when the Iron Curtain fell. A group of enthusiasts, who were pre viously involved in research and teaching in the ?eld of fault tolerant computing in different European countries, agreed that there is no longer any point in keeping pre viously independent activities apart and created a steering committee which took the responsibility for preparing the EDCC calendar and appointing the chairs for the in dividual conferences. There is no single European or global professional organization that took...