The idea of having a meeting came to the Editors when working on several aspects of galactic Be and B e] stars. They found that a general summary of the properties of B e] stars was missing, so that the organiza tion of a first meeting on these objects appeared as very useful. B e] stars have hydrogen line emission and forbidden Fe 11] and 0 I] emission lines in their spectra; they are also characterized by a strong IR excess due to circumstellar dust. Having a large amount of extinction in the UV and the visual they have been less frequently observed than other emission line objects....