General Secretary's report to the General Assembly

After the worldwide conference of the Association in Vienna , Austria year 2000, I was elected by the Board to run the office of FIAT/IFTA as general secretary. The former general secretary was Lasse Nilsson, SVT. He had been in the office for two years only. According to the statutes the general secretary may not be elected for more than two consecutive terms, i.e. a total of four years.

THE MAIN TASKS OF GENERAL SECRETARY

• Administration of the Board meetings
• Daily contact with members worldwide
• Participation at the CCAAA meetings in Paris where future planning of activities among different associations takes place: FIAF, IASA, ICA, IFLA, AMIA, SEAPAVAA ( CCAAA means Co-ordinating Council of Audiovisual Archive Associations)
• Editor of FIAT/IFTA Web Site. Weekly contact with the Webmaster
• Forwarding FIAT documents , papers and video cassettes to members worldwide
• Coordinating the programme proposals of the Commissions for the programme of the annual worldwide conference
• Responsible for the administration of the General Assembly
• Assistance to local seminars initiated by the association
• Actions to get new members

OSLO: THE OFFICE OF FIAT/IFTA
The office of the association is situated in Oslo, the capital of Norway. The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) is letting FIAT use a cottage owned by the NRK for an office. Liv Sonstebo has worked for the office as administrative secretary and she has also participated in the Board meetings, seminars and at the annual conferences to update information about the work of the association.

THE WEB SITE
When I started the work as GS, the work of the Web Site had been closed for half a year.It was very important to get the site in operation again.
The webmaster is Karl Erik Andersen who does the site according to instructions from GS. Weekly contacts between the GS and the Webmaster is a must to make the work. Both of us have taken photos and video shots during seminars, meetings and conferences for presentation on later on. We have decided that FIAT must have a "FACE" or many faces.
We are working to make it possible for short video presentations on the Web Site in the close future.
The number of visits to the web Site is: 15.606 (date: Sept.20)

OTHER ACTIVITIES OF THE GENERAL SECRETARY
I chair The Latin American Regional Group (LARG).
The contact person for Latin America is Amira Arratia, TVN in Santiagog de Chile, Chile. Her task is to assist 25 Latin American members and to approach new archives in Latin America on behalf of FIAT.
LARG initiated the local seminar in Mexico City last year. The seminar was a joint arrangement of and a result of the work at CCAAA: FIAF,IASA and FIAT. LARG is now working on a new project for year 2003: A local seminar for Caribbean on Cuba? CCAAA is also involved in the project.

For the time being I am involved in planning of a local seminar for the Nordic/Baltic states. In year 2000 we arranged a local seminar in Estonia, Tallinn.

GS assisted and attended the first local seminar in North Africa, Tunis April 24 - 27, 2002. The seminar was initiated by The training Commission chaired by Dr. Branko Bubenik, HRT.

I have also been activ giving lecturers about audiovisual archives.
In year 2001 I went to Singapore on behalf of FIAT to give a lecture about the development of audiovisual archives( E-Atlas - April 23 - 24,2001) Thank you for your attention Tedd Urnes (former Johansen)

Tedd Urnes

Tedd Urnes (formerly: Johansen)
FIAT/IFTA General Secretary