In June 2000 a meeting took place in the grand old building of the Technical University of Munich between Manfred Broy, Managing Editor of Acta Informatica since 1982, Hans Wössner from Springer-Verlag, and myself. We agreed that from August 2000 onward, I would take over the task of being the Managing Editor of Acta Informatica from Manfred Broy.

It was of course an exciting and partially unknown task for me. A continuous stream of submissions from various topics had to be directed to suitable reviewers or other members of the Editorial Board in order to be evaluated for their quality. Finally, the positive or negative decisions had to be communicated to the authors. From the beginning I have been nicely supported by my secretary Andrea Göken, who held the initial contact to authors upon submission, kept files of all submissions, and contacted the production department of Springer-Verlag once the papers were accepted. I thank her very much!

Hans Wössner and later Alfred Hofmann from Springer-Verlag kindly helped to arrange high-level organisational issues. Also, our cooperation with the production department, at first in Heidelberg and later in India, went very smooth throughout all these years inspite of changing contact persons.

The quality of the papers was always the guiding principle in all our decisions. The active members of the Editorial Board helped a lot in shaping the profile of Acta Informatica, reflecting their varied research interests. Many thanks for their continuing support!

Of course, nothing would have been achieved without the voluntary work of so many reviewers. Their names are acknowledged in the last issue of each Acta volume. I am pleased to say that Acta Informatica stays in demand for authors despite many competing publication venues. It is their high-quality contributions that have made up each of the Acta issues over the years.

However, since I have been increasingsly called upon to take up other duties, I have decided that after 14 years in office it is time for me to step down from my post as Managing Editor by the end of 2014. I shall stay on as ordinary member of the Editorial Board.

I am very pleased to announce that Alfred Hofmann from Springer-Verlag found an excellent solution for the succession in the person of Christel Baier, professor of Computer Science at the Technical University of Dresden. She takes over as Managing Editor of Acta Informatica from January 2015 onwards. I wish her every success in steering Acta Informatica into a continued good future.

Oldenburg, December 2014 Ernst-Rüdiger Olderog