Reaching this year its 15^thedition, the International Congress of Esthetic Dentistry (ICED) has become a reference event in Romania and the neighboring countries. While in the last years the number of medical scientific events has increased greatly, one has to carefully assess the program, speaker lineup and topics discussed in each announced event, because it has become impossible to attend all of them. This is not the case with the yearly Congress of Esthetic Dentistry, since the past editions have clearly made this event one of the few "must go” congresses for Romanian dentists and dental technicians.

Organized by the Society of Esthetic Dentistry in Romania (SSER), ICED brings together people from all fields of dentistry, regardless of age or experience, all speaking the same language: esthetics.

One may wonder what makes a scientific congress great? What makes it stand out from an increasingly busy calendar of events? For sure, the list of invited lecturers is one of the main criteria. This year, the speaker lineup of the ICED counts many great international speakers, like Marius Steigmann, Eric van Dooren, Galip Gurel, Paulo Monteiro or Josef Kunkela. But what is truly special about this event is that SSER promotes also Romanian speakers, most of them young and not so well known as the international speakers, but exquisite professionals and inspiring individuals, who send another message, besides the one stated in their presentations: if I can do this, you can do it too! I am not counting here Dr. Florin Cofar, who has become known worldwide for his work with Christian Coachman on the advances of esthetic dentistry and Digital Smile Design, and now has his own concept – Raw. There are many others like Iulian Filipov, Andi Drăguș or Bogdan Oprea, who demonstrate that through hard work and dedication anyone can become a keynote speaker and an opinion leader. In my opinion, SSER has done a great job promoting these amazing guys, creating an "emerging” generation of speakers, and everyone has only to gain here.

The program of the congress gets the attendee thinking, with so many interesting events happening at the same time. With 2 main halls for conferences, one hall for short communications and 5 other halls with simultaneous hands-on sessions, one has to carefully choose which lectures to attend, in order not to miss anything, or rather see what is really important, because it is impossible not to miss anything. Luckily, the organizers came up with a very interesting mobile app, which gives access to the whole program, together with abstracts for the presentations, and allows the user to make a list of the presentations he wants to attend. This way every attending person has an overview of what is happening at what time, and is able to better prioritize.

By looking at the program and at the topics presented, it becomes clear there is a tendency to promote the technology, the digital planning and execution of treatment plans and prosthetic work. Technology is everywhere around us, and nowadays promoting a digital workflow not necessarily improves the outcome, but for sure it makes every step easier, reproducible and more predictable.

Every medical specialty requires continuous training and learning, and congresses like the ECED are the best place to get up to speed with the latest concepts. Hopefully, in the future we will see more events like this one, and it will become harder and harder to choose between them.