The 16th of February 2000
Newsletter February 2000
To the National Delegates of FIG Commission 2
Dear Colleagues
I wish everyone a good New Millennium and hope that you had a successfull and happy start for the new year 2000.
In this Newsletter I will report you something about the recent ACCO meeting in Copenhagen and remind you about the next FIG general assembly and seminar in Prague next May 2000. There are also two other important workshops this year in which Commission 2 is involved: "The Mediterranean Surveyor in the new Millennium" (Malta, September 2000) and "International Symposium on Surveying Teaching" (Rosario,Argentina, October 2000).
FIG news
FIG has now a new president, Mr. Robert Foster and also the Bureau has been moved to USA. Three vice presidents are Tom Kennie(UK), Jerome Ives and Holger Magel(Germany). Secretary General is Christian Andreasen, Treasurer Charles Challstrom and Congress Director Mary Clawson.
The handover from UK to USA happened already last November and the new Bureay had their first real meeting in Copenhagen just a month ago. The ACCO meeting was planned to be just before the Bureau meeting, so we had the possibility to meet the new Presidents as well as discuss already on the next Congress with the Congress Director.
ACCO meeting in Copenhagen
ACCO is a meeting in which FIG Commission chairs and vice chairs discuss on general actual themes as well as commission work. The goal of ACCO is to help communication between commissions as well between Bureau and commissions. This time the most actual toppics in Copenhagen meeting were among others co-operation with sisten societies and regional activities – both topics have also their impacts to the development of FIG organization which is in progress.
Co-operation with sister organizations
Each commission has its professional links to different international societies. Special partners for Commission 2 are of course Commissions for Education in ISPRS and ICA , as well as IGU. We should strengthen our co-operation with them. For example virtual academy seems to be a general topic which is now active in all societies. For example in ICA Commission on Education and Training has in their terms of reference two topics:
-Internet –based cartograpgic teaching program
-Internet –based program for continuing education.
These goals seem very similar to ours in Working Group 2 "Virtual academy". Also ISPRS have similar activities. My proposal is that we activate the co-operation directly with these projects an try to build something together. In Prague seminar we will start discussing and planning our Virtual Academy Workshop and we should invite both ICA and ISPRS representatives there.
Regional activities
We try to organize workshops in locations which are typically not strongly represented in FIG working weeks and congresses. As you remember the last Workshop was organized in Wuhan, P.R. of China (many thanks to Liu Yanfang). The next workshop will be organized in Argentina, Rosario City – see the First Circular as one of the Appendices.
Prague Working Week 2000 – technical program and registration
As an appendix you will also receive the program for Prague working week as well as the invitation brochure. The early bird registration time is over, but I want to emphasize specially the special fee for students as well as the meeting for students which Commission 2 will organize during Prague week. Please, let the universities and academic people in you country know about these activities! Anyone interested in this student meeting, having ideas and wanting to be active in planning, please contact vice chair of Com 2 prof. Pedro Cavero.
We will start Working Group 2 work for Virtual Academy in Prague. It means that an open meeting is organized under that topic and anyone who is interested is welcome to attend. The chair of this WG is professor Henrik Haggrén (Helsinki University of Technology, Finland). The goal is to organize a Workshop on Virtual Academies next year (June, 2001).
See Prague program in
Http://www.ddl.org./figtree/office/prague.htm
And, please remember to book hotel rooms in time. Prague will be crowded at that time!
Commission 2 Workshop in Argentina October 18.-20. 2000
Please, find the first circular of the coming Workshop in Argentina, Rosario City attached to this letter. The organizer of this workshop from FIG side is professor Pedro Cavero, vice chair of Com 2. More information about this workshop will be sent to you later. If you are interested to submit a paper, please send an extended abstract in three paper copies as well as the file on a diskette:
-of 2-4 pages text
-including a short abstract of 4-5 lines
-in A4 format
-written in Word 97 or in rich text format, font 11
-title font 12, Times New Roman, centered
-name and address of author included (see more advice in the circular).
The abstract should be sent before April 30th, 2000 to the local organizers.You can also send your paper to:
Professor Pedro Cavero
Technical University of Madrid
Campus Sur
Ctra. De Valencia Km.7
28031 Madrid
Spain
Please, if you send the abstract to Pedro, send it two weeks earlier – so, in mid April. The main theme of the workshop is "Teaching of Surveying" – see more detailed topics in the circular. See also fees and other practicalities in the circular.
Malta workshop – "The Mediterranean Surveyor in the new Millenium".
This workshop is organized together with several FIG Commissions the main organizer is Com 5 , Jean Marie Becker. See more information on the web page
http://www.ddl.org/figtree/news/misc/malta.htm
Early registration before 30 April 2000. Dead line for abstracts was just over (15th of Feb). If you are still planning a paper for Malta, my proposal is to contact Jean-Marie, even when the dead line is over. They might be in need of good papers! ([email protected]).
Other matters
Markku Villikka has been working for the Educational Data Base as well as the academic memberships. EDB will be in web-based use. Every university is asked to update their data and all updatings should be sent to FIG office. More detailed guidelines about updating will be sent to the universities. If you go the the existing pages (you can find links to there both in Com 2 pages and in FIG pages) you can see that there already exist some links to the home pages of universities – these universities are in most cases academic members of FIG. We continue the work with academic partners and wish to improce Educational Data Base continuously.
I wish you nice spring term and also hope to see as many as possible in Prague
With best wishes
Kirsi Virrantaus
(I changed my family name recently, by marriage)