Welcome to the proceedings of ICEC 2006 Firstly, we are pleased with the solid work of all the authors who contributed to ICEC 2006 by submitting their papers. ICEC 2006 attracted 47 full paper submissions, 48 short paper submissions in total 95 technical papers. Based on a thorough review and selection process by 85 international experts from academia and industry as members of the Program Committee, a high-quality program was compiled. The International Program Committee consisted of experts from all over the world: 2 from Austria, 1 from Canada, 3 from China, 3 from Finland, 3 from France, 11 from Germany, 2 from Greece, 2 from Ireland, 5 from Italy, 10 from Japan, 1 from Korea, 7 from Netherlands, 2 from Portugal, 1 from Singapore, 3 from Spain, 3 from Sweden, 1 from Switzerland, 15 from UK, and 14 from USA. The final decision was made by review and conference chairs based on at least three reviewers' feedback available online via the conference management tool. As a result, 17 full papers and 17 short papers were accepted as submitted or with minor revisions. For the remaining submissions, 28 were recommended to change according to the reviews and were submitted as posters. This proceedings volume presents 62 technical contributions which are from many different countries: Belgium, Canada, P. R. China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, The Netherlands, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, the UK, and USA.
