News in 2022
|
"Having Ice in the Stomach" or 22 years of FIG
FIG Hand-Over Event
20 October 2022, Essen, Germany
The German Association for Geodesy, Geoinformation and Land
Management, DVW was host of this Hand-Over Event which took place during
the large Intergeo fair in Essen Germany. DVW had arranged a nice
afternoon with a guided excursion to the Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial
Complex in Essen for international and national participants, and
hereafter the Hand Over Ceremony in one of the session rooms of
Intergeo, followed by a dinner.
The fact that the event took place during Intergeo made it possible
for and was an opportunity for several to attend both. Read more about
FIG at Intergeo.
Hand over session
At the FIG Congress in Warsaw, September 2022, FIG General Assembly
elected Diane Dumashie, United Kingdom, President for the term 2023-2026
as well as the two new Vice Chairs Daniel Steudler and Winnie Shiu who
will be the operating Council together with the current Vice Presidents
Mikael Lilje and Kwame Tenadu. Daniel Steudler and Winnie Shiu will be
replacing Jixian Zhang and Diane Dumashie. Unfortunately, it was not
possible for Jixian Zhang and Winnie Shiu to attend in Essen.
In the afternoon of 20 October 2022, Current President of the German Association DVW, Hansjörg Kutterer,
opened the event on behalf of the host, DVW. Several representatives
from neighbouring associations and others related to FIG, such as Durk
Haarsma, Geomares and representatives from the exhibitors at Intergeo
hereunder SuperMap and Trimble, the German association, as well as
future FIG conferences, current and incoming commission chairs attended
the session.
|
Hansjörg Kutterer, President of DVW welcomed everyone to this
hand-over session
|
FIG Honorary President Stig Enemark (2007-2010) talked about the
development of FIG during the past 20 years.
|
Hansjörg Kutterer gave the word to Stig Enemark, Honorary President
of FIG as first speaker who talked about the development within FIG
during the past 20 years. A new governance structure was introduced
early 2000 and enforced in 2007. Stig Enemark was the first elected
President under this new governance system. Stig Enemark explained: "The
vision was to ensure that FIG became a truly democratic and globally
based NGO". Now four terms later Stig Enemark concluded "...it
is probably fair to say that the transition of the governance structure
went very well and provided some new opportunities and perspectives for
FIG, and for its stewardship of the global surveying community" and
he mentioned three resons for this; namely the truly democratic process,
the possibility to elect officials from the global surveying community,
and the establishment of the permanent office.
Read the full
address
Hereafter President Elect Diane Dumashie talked about the challenges
and opportunities for FIG that she and her new council are facing
together with the incoming Commission, Network and Task Force chairs and
all who are taking active part in the activities of FIG. Currently the
incoming President and her council are elaborating on their Work Plan for the
next four years. The term will officially start at the beginning of
2023.
Final speaker was current President of FIG Rudolf Staiger. He had
chosen a quite cryptical title of his presentation: Having Ice in the
Stomach" - or 22 years of FIG. Rudolf was introduced to FIG in 1998 and
his first participation was in 2000 - 22 years ago. At that time, the
thought that he should end up being
President of FIG was not on his mind; nor did he expect what has turned
out to be an extraordinary and exciting travel with these past 4 years
as President, 8 years as Vice President and
before then Chair of FIG Commission 5 on Positioning and
Measurement.
|
Diane Dumashie thanked for the trust from the membership to hand
over the baton of the presidency to her for the next four years
|
Rudolf Staiger talked about his experiences during the past 22
years of FIG, and especially about the different and challenging
term as President which especially the pandemic caused.
|
The four years as President turned out to be quite different than
expected. The
first year went smoothly and with many visions, ideas and initiatives
for the coming term. This was disrupted by the Covid19 pandemic closing
down the entire world and not making it possble to travel. This changed
especially the situation for the FIG Working Weeks, and much of this
term consisted of risk-management and finding out how to deal with this
situation. In 2020 it resulted in the cancellation of the Working Week
in Amsterdam, converted to 26 articles that were published during the
planned week. And here, the
cryptic title of Rudolfs presentation occurred. "Having ice in the
stomach" is a Scandinavian expression meaning that it is important to
stay calm, stay cool in order to make the right decisions. During
these years it was necessary to have ice in the stomach many times -
first due to the uncertainty of the develpment of the Covid 19 pandemic,
which led to the decision to organise a fully virtual event in 2021
together with the Dutch local organisers, and a decision to move around
some of the future conferences. On top of this the Russia invasion of
Ukraine was another challenge, especially because the Congress 2022 was
decided to take place in Warsaw, Poland, a neighbouring country to
Ukraine.
All these many changes made this term much different from previous.
The motto of this term was "Volunteering for the future", and FIG
council kept this focus during the term because of the importance of
having dedicated officials that are all volunteers to drive all the
development and work of FIG, whether onsite or online. Rudolf asked the question "Why are we
volunteering".
Read the summary of
the presentation by Rudolf Staiger
At the end of the session the FIG President chain was given over to
Diane Dumashie by Rudolf and FIG Director Louise Friis-Hansen.
Trip to the Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex in Essen
Before the acual hand over ceremony session DVW invited international
guests on a special tour visiting the the Zollverein Coal Mine
Industrial Complex in Essen. Two guides were awaiting all participants
to take and talk us through this very interesting visit which gave a
unique insight into the former times of the "Ruhr-district" - the area
which was formerly the industrial centre of Germany. A very big thanks
to DVW for making this trip possible and especially to Wilhelm Zeddies
for arranging it all so fine and smoothly.
The perfect end end of the day was a dinner for German and
International participant which DVW kindly hosted. During the dinner it
was revealed that Rudolf will continue under a new role, namely as President of DVW
which was announced during Intergeo.
Louise Friis-Hansen
14 November 2022
