Dear Delegates,
As the World Design Capital for 2014, the City of Cape Town has embarked on a journey to becoming a sustainable city through design-led thinking. The theme for this year is ‘Live Design. Transform Life’. This platform has given us the wonderful prospect to reflect on the challenges we face as a city, and how design can turn those challenges into opportunities for residents and investors as well as local government.
It is no secret that transformation through innovation is a passion of mine and I have often said that we need to explore creative approaches to the complex problems faced by society. The common thread through these complexities we face is the demand for balance. We need to balance ecological needs with the immediate needs of our residents. We need to strive for efficiency and speed to attract investment, and simultaneously capitalise on and up skill our human resources and all that they have to offer in order to fight unemployment. It is in reaching that equilibrium that we will find lasting solutions to the difficulties which plague modern-day society.
As you deliberate on the latest innovations in Automatic Control, may you be inspired to use your knowledge and skills to impact social change in the communities you hail from across the globe. I urge you to keep global social challenges in mind during your dialogue and debates. I believe that this is one of the most important ways in which you can contribute to the development of engineering. May the networks you expand during the course of this congress inspire collaboration that will take humanity to new heights through the relevance of your work.
I would like to thank you for choosing the City of Cape Town as the destination for the congress. I hope that you will also find some time to enjoy all that Cape Town has to offer. Allow me to wish each and every one of the 2000 delegates attending the19th World Congress of the International Federation of Automatic Control a very warm welcome to the City of Cape Town. I wish you every success for the forthcoming proceedings.
Patricia de Lille
Executive Mayor, City of Cape Town
