What’s up? April 2012

As you know, Jiao-Xi February Plenary elected a Bureau with a few newcomers.

Getting organized was our first job, while Louise Joselyn, our former Secretary, was putting a final touch on the Bureau and Plenary Minutes (thanks Louise!).

Getting organized meant spreading responsibilities around, so all matters are covered by at least one Bureau member, from competition to safety, through communication, etc.

It also meant getting used to Basecamp. Basecamp is a software used by FAI, a web-based project management and collaboration tool. We decided that most of the Bureau exchanges and work would be done through it. Besides the functionalities that Basecamp offers, the exchanges and work done can be archived, and therefore used as references for future Bureaux.

This year projects are ambitious and we started working on them.

You know the difficulties the paragliding competition scene went through last year. The Plenary had to deal with a few contradictory proposals and decided to let the Paragliding Subcommittee and specific Competition Structure Working Group deal with them (check former News on this website). Discussions have started. We will let you know later what’s up on these matters. No consensus expected yet: we are just too early in the process.

Other subcommissions have, of course, also started their own work.

Also…

We want to update all documents, including our Guidelines For Organisers Handbook and Long Term Plan.

We will create new ones, like a CIVL Handbook, to help anyone find his way in the FAI – CIVL maze of documents, rules, ways of working…, and a Bureau Handbook to structure the way we work.

We will work on how to make more efficient our Plenary and Bureau meetings.

Of course the day to day job of running CIVL and dealing with problems as they come never stops. Local regulations were finalized and published, worries about such or such championship discussed, coming deadlines met…

All that induced in my personal CIVL mailbox some 500+ messages since the Plenary. So, yes, the people you elected are at work. They are all volunteers. They are thinking about getting professional help (communication and secretarial work) but are not quite ready for it yet. This would be the cherry on the cake, but we have to cook the cake first, i.e. have CIVL run smoothly with motivated and hard working people.

Please let us know what you think. I will be your contact and will transmit to the Bureau or whoever.

Stef Malbos, Website Content Coordinator