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.



Rudolf Staiger and Diane Dumashie with the incoming council, from left Kwame Tenadu, Daniel Steudler and to the right Mikael Lilje. Unfortunately Winnie Shiu was not able to attend.

     

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