President's Report

Dear Colleagues,

Since Antalya, I have had the opportunity to address each of you, and to remind you of my determination and the Executive Council's, to set ambitious goals for FIAT/IFTA that should result in concrete actions, and to ensure that these are progressing, bringing positive benefits to all FIAT members.

I promised also to report to you in total transparency the decisions taken by the Executive Council following our meeting in Paris last December. You will find in this Newsletter the outcome of our discussions and collective work.

In September, in Brussels where the FIAT/IFTA annual conference will take place, I will again report on its progress.

In the meanwhile, you are invited to respond to the agreed actions and projects and to take an active part in any of them. I will personnally pay a special attention to all your messages. Do not hesitate to contact me or any of the EC members. We should not wait until the next annual conference to develop an open dialogue, to exchange our views and concerns.

To this end, the web site has to play a central part in connecting all FIAT/IFTA members. Its reorganisation is progressing step by step, in order to provide updated information about FIAT/IFTA activities, a range of written materials and links to further sources of useful information in the field of archive management. Furthermore, there will be a hot line service aiming at answering your questions on archival matters. I would like also to introduce moving image samples from your archive as well as descriptions of your holdings, as a way to know each other better and to promote the value and use of FIAT/IFTA members images. You are invited to send them to the webmaster.

Finally, I would like to report on my efforts to coordinate FIAT/IFTA's activities promoting the preservation of the world audiovisual heritage with its sister organisations. It is essential that we speak as one voice if we want to be heard, and if we want to influence national and international officials to take concrete steps to saveguard our endangered holdings. To this end, I have met with Kurt Deggeller from IASA, Giulio Giordano and Angelo Sferrazza from Copeam, Jean Stock from EBU, Philippe Quéau from Unesco. I have attended the EBU/IAG meeting in Rome, I will chair the Co-ordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives Associations (CCAAA) meeting next March.

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) will take place in Geneva next December, and I have submitted a resolution on behalf of FIAT. We will attend its Second Preparatory Committee meeting in February, its main objective being the consideration of a draft Declaration of Principles and Action Plan to be submitted for the approval of Heads of State attending the Summit. Finally, we will take part in the Swiss "Initiative in favour of the least developped countries", gathering RTSI (and our colleague Theo Maeusli), the Swiss Commission for Unesco, the Swiss Italian University, as well as NGOs, such as IASA, ICA and FIAT/IFTA.

Looking forward to hearing from you all,

Emmanuel Hoog
FIAT/IFTA President - E-mail: ehoog@ina.fr
3rd February 2003