Before the meeting there was the opening of a memorial plaque at Holy Cross Cathedral in Petrozavodsk in honor of Konstantin Arseniev - the founder of Russian statistics, a prominent Russian scientist, geographer, historian and one of the founders of the Russian Geographical Society, ordinary member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, mentor of Prince Alexander Nikolayevich - the future Russian Emperor Alexander II.

Ceremonies were organized by the KarRC RAS Institute of Economics in cooperation with the Federal State Statistics Service of the Republic of Karelia due to the decision of the International scientific and practical conference in honor of K. Arseniev, "Problems of Economic Geography and spatial development statistics" which is conducted by the Institute since 1995.