Summary of the discussions during the SCIJ PICTURES Summermeeting 26-29 May 2005 in
LLORET DE MAR, Costa Brava, Spain

From 26 to 29 May the Spanish team organised a wonderful SCIJ summer meeting in Lloret de Mar on the Costa Brava, north of Barcelona. About 30 members from a dozen different countries had four days to enjoy the Catalan sun, the beautiful crescent beaches, the golden sand, the pine groves, the best of the local gastronomy and wines, the ancient town of Girona, the crazy Dalì museum in Figueres and, last but not least, a good discussion on the future of SCIJ.

We cannot share the sun we basked and the waves we swam in, but we would at least like to tell you about the thoughts we exchanged. We feel that the meeting was very good from this point of view as well. We analysed two points in particular: the structure of SCIJ and the possibility to cooperate with other organisations.

The present structure of SCIJ is sometimes felt to be obsolete. It doesn’t allow the International Committee (IC) enough room to set our own agenda regarding both the choice of the host resorts and the programme of the meetings. We should define our objectives and wishes more clearly, so as to be able to adapt the structure of the IC to the real challenges and give more specific and concrete mandates to the President, the Secretary General (SG) and the four Vice-Presidents (VP). Four main domains of competence were identified: the technical aspects of the races, the website, the marketing and finding of sponsors, and the planning of the future meetings.

One obstacle to the possibility to choose the best from a variety of host resorts is that there are fewer and fewer skihills that are able and willing to organise a SCIJ meeting for 185 euros. This obliges us to accept whatever candidatures we get, having little control over the actual running of the event. The 185 euros limit was decided by the General Assembly (GA) in Maribor (Slovenia) in 2000. In Lloret the proposal was put forward to abolish this limit. In some countries 185 euros can guarantee a fairly good meeting, but in others this amount of money makes it impossible if we are not to heavily depend on private sponsors. The IC should of course always guarantee the best quality-price relationship, depending on the single situation and resort, and it should always bear in mind that the partecipation should be affordable for the largest possibile number of journalists. As it is especially the young who usually have to cope with low salaries, some incentives could be envisaged, like for example exempting them from the SCIJ fee for their first year in our skiclub. Any candidature should be presented to the GA with the indication of the price demanded for the week, so that the GA would keep its power to decide if and where the next meetings should be held.

We risk of course that fewer people will turn up whenever the price is higher than 185 euros. But then our present experience tells us that many members usually come if the resort is thought to be nice, whereas fewer partecipate, even if the price is convenient, if the chosen locality is not well known, like for example in Jeseniky this year. SCIJ is often regarded as a cheap tourist agency, which most certainy it does not want to be. More flexibility in the choice of our host resorts would permit us to concentrate more on the contents that we want for our meetings. The equation where you have freedom of choice, interesting resorts, cheap prices, discreete sponsors, big numbers of journalists and good subjects is unfortunatey not always possible. The IC can be stronger if it is given more power to decide which of these points to privilege each year. But a stronger IC can also be more proactive in the search of interesting skiing domains, for example by taking the initiative to invite representatives from different skihills to our meetings in order to actively motivate them to organise one in the future. A VP with the specific task of taking care of this activity could be of great help to the President and SG.

A proposal was also put forward to limit the mandate of the IC members to 2 or 3 years, renewable only one time. This would guarantee a better turnover and representativity, giving a chance of involvement to our younger members. On the other hand, the value of experience could be lost. Some members suggested not to hold elections for the President and the SG together, so as to grant continuity to the management of the club; others stressed the close personal cooperation needed between President and SG, which would rather suggest a ticket candidature; others still illustrated the advantages of a set, closed list of candidates to be voted as a whole.

The second point that was discussed at lenght in Lloret was the possibility for SCIJ to cooperate more closely with other organisations that at least partly share our ideals of sport and profession. Two concrete examples were made: the Paralympics and the Reportèrs sans Frontière (RSF). They would both permit us to expand on some important aspects of our engagement in SCIJ. It would of course be wrong to simply use the other association as a means to get more visibility and maybe no definitive agreement should be reached with neither of them. But, just to give two examples, a visit to the seat of the next Paralympic games would offer us a good insight into the organisation of the event and an excellent subject to write on; whereas a conference together with RSF on the situation of the freedom of press in the host country of our meeting would very much be in the tradition of SCIJ. The IC agreed to follow the suggestion and invite a representative of RSF to our next meeting in Bulgaria, where the possibilities for  a closer cooperation could best be studied and discussed.

Finally, the assembly examined the two proposals put forward for our next summer meeting in 2006. SCIJ currently has two opportunities: Argentina and Israel. Both seem equally serious and interesting. The IC will ask both candidates to closely define their proposals within the next month, so as to be able to make the best choice, considering the numerous factors at play (guarantee of involvement, transport prices, agenda of visits, etc).

This report can of course sum up only a fraction of the richness of the discussion in Lloret. All members, those who took part in the round table and those who did not, who think some valuable point has been missed in this summary are welcome to contribute their observations to the open forum on our website (www.scij.org). Next year in Bulgaria we shall thus be able to have a better discussion at the GA and maybe also have a vote on the proposed abolishion of the money limits. And our meeting in Lloret might as well turn out to be a useful starting point for all those members who are thinking about presenting their candidatures at the 2006 elections for a new President and SG, helping them to better understand the different opinions and accordingly prepare their electoral programmes.

A big thank you goes to the Spanish team for making all this possibile. Thanks for the perfect organisation of the 2005 summer meeting and thanks for the heart you put in every single detail of our stay.

Ivana Suhadolc

SCIJ president