Event director Tim Courtney said “The response since we announced the NFC World Congress has been amazing, and we’ve been surprised by the number of companies, speakers and delegates that want to participate.

“We did announce this new event at relatively short notice, though, and we would like to give more time to companies who were not aware of the event, or who have not had the chance to plan ahead, to become involved.”

“We want to make absolutely sure that the NFC World Congress addresses real business needs, is genuinely useful to its participants and contributes to the development of the industry.

“To that end, after extensive consultations throughout the industry, we feel that the best way to make the NFC World Congress the definitive near field communication business event that we all hope it will be is to run the event at a later date.”

“We looked at moving it to some time later this year but the calendar for the NFC business and related fields is quite busy so the first NFC World Congress will now be held in Brussels in June 2009. I look forward to seeing you there,” he concluded.

Further information will be published on the NFC World Congress website as it becomes available, and you can sign up for the event’s occasional email newsletter to make sure you are notified of the new dates as soon as they are announced.

Proposals are invited from speakers who can contribute presentations on near field communication to either the NFC Workshop or the main NFC World Congress programme. Four types of speaking opportunities are available:

• Lessons from the front line — Case studies from the payments, transit, marketing & promotion, connectivity, content & information services and ID arenas.
• NFC Workshop guest presenters — Technical and business presentations from experts in the field, focussing on the business case for NFC, NFC applications, NFC technology and NFC project management.
• Innovation showcase — The opportunity for those working on innovative new NFC applications and technologies to present their work to delegates.
• Discussion group leaders — Round-table workgroup leaders with specific expertise in a particular aspect of the NFC ecosystem from either a technical or business perspective. Discussion groups will focus on mobile payments, ticketing, Bluetooth2.1+EDR & Wireless USB, content & information services, marketing & promotion, NFC project planning and more.

Detailed guidelines for potential speakers are available in the call for papers section of the NFC World Congress website.

The closing date for proposals is March 12, 2008.