Future of FIAT/IFTA

Lasse Nilsson

With a couple of years in the rear view mirror now and with a FIAT General Assembly (GA) soon coming on I would like to further contribute to the discussion on the future of FIAT/IFTA.

Some of you may recall I have tried to bring up to discussion changes of the statutes of FIAT/IFTA concerning the core values of the organization. Also a discussion on modifying the different membership categories, in order to feed more energy into the organization by taking better care of active members.
I will not return to that here, since I know these proposals has been forwarded by the present Executive Council (EC) to the new post-Turkey GA EC to deal with until next GA.

I have seen in the GA candidates for President presentations lately some ideas being aired that makes me seriously hesitant.

Running a professional organization like FIAT/IFTA, with the constant increase of the membership for several years now, requires a certain level of administration. Let us not deceive ourselves with the idea that it is still possible to run a World Organization like FIAT/IFTA the way we did 25 years ago, relaying on the administrational resources of the respective organizations of EC members.

The membership should expect a continuous and professional administrative support of their organization, independently of whom the EC for the time being is made up of.
For the same reason we cannot entrust an office to a member just because he/she can furnish the organization with administrative resources for an election period. Professional administration quite simply means that the organization has to provide a budget for it.

The latter also goes for the powerful means of marketing of the FIAT/IFTA and the continuity between the regularly occurring events - the FIAT/IFTA web site. It requires the continuity of professional editing, technical development and maintenance. Retiring as Secretary General two years ago I pointed that out in detail in my final report to the GA and EC. Since the EC still believed a professional web site runs by itself at no cost FIAT/IFTA for more than half a year had no updated website!
I'm very happy every time I log into the FIAT/IFTA web site today and realize how professionally it is now maintained and edited. I urge the coming EC to refrain from changing it to anything else.

Regarding the idea of lifting the bar in the statutes on having a member representing more than one proxy vote at the GA, may open up to the less democratic manoeuvres of collecting votes beforehand.

Lasse Nilsson

Lasse Nilsson
Member of the FIAT/IFTA Television Studies Workgroup.
Former Secretary General FIAT/IFTA and Chair Programming & Production Commission.
E-mail: Lasse.Nilsson@svt.se