President's Corner

I greet you as the newly elected FIAT President. In Florence I received great support by an impressive majority of the full member delegates. So first of all I want to thank all colleagues who gave me their confidence. And then I want to thank the former President Tedd Johansen. I hope you know that as by the FIAT Statutes the president's term is only 4 years. So it was nothing against Tedd's qualities as president that we had elections.

And I think that FIAT had 4 good years under the leadership of our Norwegian colleague. I want to thank him and his General Secretary Steve Bryant for these 4 years in which great progress was achieved. By the way, I think FIAT's prosperity was the reason that there were 4 candidates running for president this time. They were, next to myself, Dominique Saintville of INA, Sue Malden of BBC and Lasse Nilsson of SVT. After the election I suggested that both ladies should become my Vice-Presidents and Lasse Nilsson my new General Secretary. This was accepted by the Board. And to underline the continuity, Tedd Johansen was also elected Vice-President. For me, this function arrangement is the refelection of the election platform that I presented in Florence and which I would like to repeat below: Before the election I mentioned, that there were 4 candidates and I gave you 4 arguments:

1. What to do? FIAT is on the right way, but now we need a dynamic era to find even more sponsors, members and money. I like all the proposals of the other candidates and if I would be elected as president, I would encourage them to be an important part of my further FIAT activities - so to say as an inner circle of the FIAT Board. We need every effort and I want to motivate every Board member and every FIAT member accordingly. So I'm glad that there is so much interest for the function of the president.

2. Why am I a candidate? I am a specialist for dynamic reforms. When I started 17 years ago as an archivist (before I was teacher and journalist) the ORF was very old fashioned in the field of archives. Now, after 11 years of being head of my archives in Vienna, we are a modern, attractive institution, we have 7 times more users, my team is motivated and professional, we have a good reputation amongst our journalist colleagues. So if you vote for me - you vote for my excellent team in Vienna; you also vote for Herbert Hayduck, Johannes Kraus, Uta Tschernuth, Camillo Foramitti and Ms. Politsch in Vienna. And: I have a good position in the ORF, not least through activities which started in FIAT like EUROMEDIA and VICAR.

3. How can we go on? We need some further activities in FIAT, too: more and better information throughout the year for all our members by an extended newsletter and by constant e-mail messages. I think we should shorten our big conferences and try to have more smaller, regional conferences between these big meetings - like the Documentation Seminar in London. And last but not least we need more money from the industry to support our colleagues that have not yet arrived in the digital era, to restore the old video tapes, to finance the production of catalogues, etc.

4. And finally, an argument for those who want a better balance between North and South: Vienna is the heart of Europe and maybe music is the soul of the world - so Vienna is the cultural capital of the world. And if I will be elected, there will be a great chance that I can try to convince my ORF bosses to host the FIAT General Assembly in Vienna in autum 2000 - just as RAI has so wonderfully done this year in Florence.

Let me summarize: if you vote for me, you vote for all the candidates, you vote for my excellent team in Vienna and you also vote for some reforms to increase the successfull activities of FIAT - and you vote for a General Assembly in 2 years in Vienna.

That was my Florence speech. I can already report that the ORF management has given its consent that the next General Assembly after Rio be held in Vienna.

In this sense: Help me to totally realize my election promises. Only if every single FIAT member is more active in the future, FIAT can still become even more successfull. It depends only on you!

Peter Dusek