New General Secretary

Lasse Nilsson
Photo: Gösta Johansson

Dear Members and Colleagues,

This time I address you for the first time as your new General Secretary. In Sweden, where I live in a small village 25 kilometres south of Stockholm, we have got the first snow for the season and it is cold. But that does not at all reflect the post-Florence Conference situation for me. Everything from the warming congratulations on my new FIAT/IFTA task to the numerous hot activities of this organisation. As I said in my speech to the General Assembly in Florence: "It is an indisputable fact of the importance of FIAT/IFTA - that this organisation has achieved the recognition of being indispensable, competent and cooperative in the area of audiovisual archiving!"

As co-ordinator of the Conference Organising Committee (COC) I am already working on the details of next year's FIAT/IFTA Conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. If Florence was a very special event, I can promise you that Rio will be something extra! We will meet both "a New World of Audiovisual Archiving" as well as exciting insights into "Audiovisual Archiving in the New World". Book October 3-5 1999 in your diary already now.

The venue for the Conference and General assembly in the year 2000 is already decided: Vienna. That also brings up the question of future conference venues; The FIAT/IFTA COC invites proposals from members interested in hosting the annual conferences for the years 2001, 2002 and 2003. The objective in soliciting venues for several years ahead is manifold: to make possible a long-term planning, to attract sponsorship and to vary the venues geographically. The proposals will be forwarded to the EC for consideration and decision. I will be happy to provide you with further information on what elements to think of for a proposal.

A few weeks ago FIAT/IFTA was represented as one of the supporting organisations at the United Nations World Television Forum in New York. The heading of this year's conference is "The Future of Audiovisual Memory. Looking at the 20th Century - Towards the 21st Century." Apart from myself and our new President, Peter Dusek, Vice-President Tedd Johansen and quite a few FIAT/IFTA members will be present. You can find my report from this event in this issue of the Newsletter.

The Executive Council will have the first post-Conference meeting in Vienna at the end of the month. This meeting will be dedicated to organisational matters, like a new Administrative Secretary (the successor to the outgoing Gösta Johansson), appointing new Commissions chairs for the Programming & Production Commission and the Training Commission and planning for the near future.

At the beginning of December all Commissions will meet at different places all over Europe. As chair of the Programming & Production Commission I will hand over the chairmanship at the meeting hosted by DR TV in Copenhagen. One of the main items on the agenda will be a discussion of the working fields of the commission, since the commission has recently finished another important project - the Guidelines for use of Archive Material, with its video appendix. But of course, the programme of the Rio Conference will also take a considerable part of the efforts, since the main responsibility for working out the conference programme lies with the Commissions.

Other events also planned for in the year 1999 are a Documentation Seminar in Germany and the first FIAT/IFTA-Focal Researchers' Summer School in London next summer.

So, we are looking ahead at a year rewarding for all FIAT/IFTA members. But, "There is no such thing as a free lunch!", one of the former Presidents of this organisation, Mrs. Anne Hanford used to say. By that I want to underline that we need your membership fee paid in time. And we need you, who are already members, in the active work of finding new members.

Do not hesitate in contacting me or anyone else of the Executive Council or the Commissions with your questions!

Lasse Nilsson
General Secretary
lasse.nilsson@svt.se
Phone +46 8 784 5740
Fax +46 8 660 4000
or ordinary mail:

FIAT/IFTA
c/o Sveriges Television
Tevearkivet
S-105 10 Stockholm, Sweden

Florence, Ponte Vecchio
Photo: Gösta Johansson