Meeting Report Administrative Council in Pula, Croatia, 10-11 June 2001

When you receive information about a meeting site that is more or less unknown, you start to look for it on the map. Sometimes it is hard to find it when you do not even know which part of the country it is in. This is what happened to me when I was looking for Pula in Croatia (perhaps I did not listen to the presentation carefully enough). You also start to wonder how to get there. Then you plan the trip - how to get there and how much it will cost. Nevertheless, with some help from the local organisers and travel agencies, you manage. My journey to Pula turned out to be a very smooth one and not very expensive.

You never can tell what it will be like when you arrive in a new place you have never visited before. It is this that makes participation at different meetings so exciting. Pula has an interesting culture and enjoys beautiful surrounding scenery. This created a good background to the Administrative Council meeting that we had two days before MEDICON'01. The help and support from Ratko Magjarevic and his co-workers ensured the success of the AC meeting.

Almost all members of the AC attended the meeting in Pula, as well as five invited persons representing different committees, working groups and organisations. This gave us a good opportunity to discuss several important issues during the meeting. The complete minutes have been posted on the IFMBE web site (www.ifmbe.org). When I write complete, I mean a document containing 100 pages altogether. This PDF document contains 29 appendices describing officers' reports and activities of the committees and working groups. Still, I would like to take this opportunity to highlight some issues discussed at the meeting.

The structure of the membership fees had already been discussed at the AC meeting in Evanston in USA last year. At this meeting, the AC decided on the structure and the fee, which have been unchanged for almost 10 years. The AC also discussed about more activities within IFBME, which need financing. Therefore, the AC felt that both a new structure and a new fee were justified. Information was sent to the national secretaries in April for comments, but only two replies were received. The members of the AC also noticed that information about the benefits of IFMBE membership given to the members must be increased.

We have decided that membership fees should from now on be paid in US dollars rather than in pounds sterling, since it is easier to know the exchange rate between different currencies and US dollars. The calculation of the new membership fee corresponds to the calculation of the number of delegates that every member society has in the General Assembly. The table below shows the new structure.

Number of members	Fee [$] per member
0 - 31	$2.00
32 - 316	$1.75
317 - 3162	$1.00
3163	$0.50

The increase in the membership fee is 100% for most of the Societies since before the fee was £0.75 for each member in a Society up to 500 members. £0.75 is about $1.00.

The AC is very much aware that some of the new Societies have difficulties paying the membership fee since they have not yet started functioning properly and earning money. Therefore, Jean-Pierre Morucci proposed that a new Member Society from an underdeveloped country could request to be excused from paying the membership fee during the first three years of their membership. The request should be sent to the AC for approval. These two motions were approved unanimously.

According to the IFMBE Constitution, Article 9, the Secretary General can submit proposals to the General Assembly by mail. These proposals can deal with introduction, deletion, or amendment of articles of the Constitution or of Byelaws and they may be proposed by the Administrative Council, or in writing, by at least ten per cent of the voting members at a meeting of the General Assembly. The closing date for such ballots shall be set at not less than sixty (60) days after mailing. The reason for such a long time was to allow regular mail to reach the delegate and have it returned by regular mail to the Secretary General for the count. Since discussion and votes can now be handled by email, there is no need to wait 60 days. Jos Spaan proposed that the closing date for the ballot be reduced to thirty days instead and it was approved unanimously. Since this proposal changes the Constitution, it must be sent to the General Assembly for decision. Therefore, I will send a letter to all delegates and other voting members of the General Assembly. A notification will also be sent to the National Secretaries. This process will be conducted by mail ballot.

The AC also approved a motion proposed by Marc Nyssen concerning the voting procedure. He proposed that IFMBE should begin to conduct voting via a secure web server and associated technology within one year. The Secretary General will propose an implementation. This is completely in accordance with the ideas of developing the IFMBE web to become more effective in services to the membership.

The members of the web site editorial board were asked prior to the AC meeting to send their ideas of how to develop the web. In addition, some other AC members were asked to come up with ideas for improvement. We also discussed a proposal for a new design, which was available during MEDICON 2001 so that everybody had the chance to give his or her opinion on the web site. Before the new web pages are launched, we still need to add some functions for interactive services, such as updating the address database. However, new ideas on what the web should contain and how it should look like are always welcome. Therefore, I urge all the members to send me their opinions. Information of the forthcoming conferences is an example of what we could have posted on our web site. The latest addition on the list of conferences and meetings is the CMBEC 27, which will be held in Ottawa in May 2002.

We also discussed the IFMBE web domain registration during the meeting in Pula. Already in the Officers' meeting in Singapore Mladen Poluta suggested that IFMBE should register several web domains in order to be sure that others cannot take advantage and use them. In April this year, the domains "ifmbe.net" and "ifmbe.com" were registered. There is a possibility to register other domains such as ".biz" or similar, but these are in general so special that there is not such as big risk that others would use them. We could also register domains that are not yet official, just to be sure that we get the registration if and when the domains become official. This was deemed unnecessary for the moment.

The next AC meeting will be held in Reykjavik, Iceland, in connection with the Nordic-Baltic Conference (for more details look at the IFMBE web site). Two of the organisers from Iceland were also in Pula, and we had a very good opportunity to discuss details of the conference, and we look forward to visiting the warm springs in Iceland. I am also sure that memories of our meeting in Pula and the hospitality of our Croatian friends during our stay there will last. I would like to thank Ratko Magjarevic and his co-workers once more for the help we received during our meeting.

Heikki Terio
IFMBE Secretary General
Email: Heikki.Terio@mta.hs.sll.se