H.E.Danielsen, Nov.25, 1996
Response to Dr.D'Hautcourt's email - by Hovard E. Danielsen:
At 17:08 24.11.96 +0100, D'Hautcourt Jean-Luc wrote:
>I) The new association could be a "Union" like the IUIS (International Union
>of Immunological Societies) but, of course, for Europe thus E.U.I.S.
>This union will not have any power at the national level.
>Representatives of each national society, in proportion of their members,
>will constitued the board of the "Union".
This means that large national organizations will dominate the new organization, and representation will be based on national membership and not necessarily on qualitity. The democratic process of election would thereby be excluded as well. Such a union will probably have no identity of its own, and little chance of working better than ESACP is doing today.
>II) This "Union" could only have as members, the national societies
>themself, and not their individual members.
In other word, countries without national cytometry societies will be excluded. This would e.g be the case for present members from Norway........
>VI) The editorial board would be progressively modified to offer a better
>national representation and also taking into account the new orientations of
>the Journal.
In my opinion, the editorial board should be based on quality only, regardless of nationality. It should not necesarily reflect the membership or national representation. Why should the Journal have a new orientation, and what kind of orientation is this?
General comments:
The ESACP has achieved several important things: We have got a new and good journal with an steadily increasing impact, and we have got bi-annual conferences of high quality and good participation (700 in Grenoble!) We have obtained a consensus on image-DNA ploidy etc.etc.
At the moment we do have some problems with a low number of members, and some other problems due to this. One must, however, at the same time point out that little has been done from the last ESACP boards in order to gain new members, at least seen from where I stand. I have personally not received any payment details since 1994, and am probably as a consequence not a member any longer. No one has approached me with any information regarding ESACP (until recently), and the visual activity (with exception of ACP & the conferences - which is due to the efforts of a few) have been scarce. It is therefore not such a surprise that the number of members is low. It is actually more surprising that the positive effects of ESACP have been so good! Based on its main activities (ACP & Conferences), this organization has been very successful, and the use of ACP and the attendence of the congresses clearly states (at least to me) that ESACP with its main focuses is needed and wanted! If more members are needed, more active marketing of the organization must be made by the board and its members.
Will ESACP be improved by making it into a federation of the national societies? Will the present members (which by definition are ESACP) be better served by a new federation?
Is it not possible for the different national societies to sign collective membership with ESACP - giving each national society member a serious discount on the membership fee, but the same rights as every member? This is a very common organisational structure, at least in the nordic countries. The advantages are the same - increasing the membership and thereby official grant and support. In this way each national society will have their proportional weight in all matters within ESACP - provided that they have active members themselves! In a federation, one often sees that single persons representing large organizations get a lot of power and influence, regardless of whether that organization is active inside the federation or not.
There is a number of important aspects that has to be looked into, but from where I stand, the federation idea does not seem to be better than what we have today.
Since I so far only have seen comments to the federation alternative, I would be very interested to hear from those who have opposite or other opinions in this matter!
With best regards from
Hovard E.Danielsen
Organizer of 5th ESACP Congress