As she has been here it would be most unseemly not to give her the praise due to her in the newspaper published by the BVV. Now that the former principle manager of Invex has left for Prague in search of new working adventures, this is the right time to say that this lady has played a key part in the creation of the modern computer trade fair.

The oldest Invex I can really remember is that held in 1990. "The organisers record 400 companies from 10 countries exhibiting on a total exhibition area of 5,000 m². It was extremely hectic. Many new companies, big and small, beared their teeth and tried to compete with the established, and often less flexible, state and co-operative concerns," reported the then editor of Software News ZbyÜek Bahensk². We have all long since forgotten what the beginnings of Czech capitalism in the field of informatics were like - that, and even worse, is what they were like. What companies did ZbyÜek name in his report? Software602, Delta Software, Tesla Eltos, DM-Servis, Software SluÜovice, Microsoft, Computer Associates. I am sure he failed to mention not a single important exhibitor. So that, then, was Invex nine years ago. What a long way it has come since then.

All those sayings about the long roads this or that event have taken are strictly metaphorical. Events do not run by themselves. Someone must take them by the hand and take each tiny step with them and for them. This is generally done by people who do not get into the limelight all that often. They do not present Crystal Disks, they do not pose for the television cameras. They don't have time. They generally have to work while the celebrations are going on.

Jitka Pavlonovß worked as Invex-Computer fair manager from 1992 until the beginning of this year. She held the highest executive post at Invex for six seasons. She helped in its unforeseeable rise, experienced the climatic seasons from 1994 to 1996 with it - years in which, seemingly of their own accord, the differences between Invex and similar events in Western Europe ceased to exist. She came to know both the good and bad sides of the organisation of such an exclusive event. "Just think, that we devote the whole year to something which lives a mere five days and then, in the space of a few minutes, simply disappears from the surface of the earth," she said to me in January 1995. I remember that sentence to this day.

I don't know if anyone ever gave her fitting thanks for the hard work she invested in the rise of Invex from the provinces to the world outside. I don't know if she is here now, and will read these words. In any case I would like to present her with an imaginary, though huge, bouquet, on behalf of all the exhibitors and visitors. I can wish her successor nothing more than that he should continue the successful tradition she began.