Letter from WAPOR President (January 2024)

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Note: This document was translated from English into many different languages. In case of any discrepancy or inconsistency between the English version and any other translation, the English version shall always prevail.

The year 2023 ended with a bang as our membership size reached a record high. After the turn of the solar year, now 2024, we are building up more momentum with many new initiatives aimed at expanding our reach and impact around the world, for the good of humanity let me add.

Following what I did in my last letter, in the name of accountability and transparency, let me summarize some key points from the draft minutes of our Executive Council Meeting held on January 30 which is less than one day before I write this letter, so that everyone can know more of how WAPOR works. To save space, I will focus on the most important and relevant parts of the draft minutes.

Executive Council (ExCo) Meeting held on January 30, 2024

• Adoption of the agenda

ExCo noted that for future ExCo and Council Meetings, discussion papers not shared with members three calendar days before a meeting will probably not be discussed at the meeting, and that draft minutes will be circulated to members within three calendar days after the meeting.

• Adoption of minutes

ExCo discussed the possibility of putting all meeting minutes in a digital WAPOR archive along with other historical documents.

• Future meetings in 2024

The dates of ExCo and Council Meetings up to the end of July 2024 have been set as follow: ExCo Meetings on January 30, March 12, May 10 and July 9; Council Meetings on February 22, April 11, and July 28 during our Annual Conference. A Policy Forum will be held on June 13 opened to Councillors, Committee Members and Chapter Representatives. The schedule of meetings after July shall be decided after the Annual Conference in Seoul.

• WAPOR Archive

WAPOR Archive has come to life on January 30: . It now has 776 documents, including WAPOR Codes and Guides, Freedom Reports, newsletters, conference presentations, webinar records, WAPORnet messages, feature topics and a lot more. WAPOR members will be encouraged to submit more materials, especially conference papers, to the Archive via our Secretariat.

• WAPOR historical archive and Dropbox

Our Honorary Historian has located 13 boxes of paper documents, plus about 13,000 documents stored at the University of North Carolina Library. For digital documents, we only have some selected documents, mainly from 2016-2023, in our Dropbox. ExCo will develop a plan to digitize all documents and store them in Dropbox, and then grant open access to members or to the world after a fixed period of time. This becomes particularly important and timely as we approach our 80th anniversary and many colleagues are working on the book on WAPOR history. A proposal will be drawn up for discussion at our next ExCo Meeting.

• National Representatives

As of January 30, 118 countries are represented in WAPOR. The Secretariat will double check that all Representatives have paid their membership dues, and our webpage displaying the names of all Representatives will be enhanced to include procedures for nominations and appointments, including self-nominations and re-appointments.

• Membership situation (abstracted from the Executive Director’s Report)

As of January 23, WAPOR has 352 members, including 39 student members, 5 retired members, 33 lifetime members, 43 individual business paid members, and 232 individual members. In addition, WAPOR currently has 4 Friends of WAPOR, 3 organizational members, 24 chapter only members. Thus, we can say that we now have 383 persons/friends/organizations in our WAPOR Community, and since this is the beginning of a new year, the number will grow as more membership renewals come in.

• WAPOR 2024-2025 conference update

The Conference Committee met on January 22, together with many other colleagues, and extended the deadline for abstract submission for this year’s conference to February 29. As of January 30, there are 42 abstracts submitted. The Committee will meet again on February 26, it will also touch base on the preparation of the 2025 conference to be held in St Louis. When ExCo meets again on March 12, it will look into the longer and bigger issue of WAPOR conference cycles, in light of conference developments of the Regional Chapters.

• Proposal for employing an Administrative and Technical Assistant

ExCo approved the proposal to open a new position of “IT and Administrative Assistant” working at 50% loading meaning 20 hours per week. The Assistant will be employed by WAPOR as an independent contractor and shall work remotely. The Assistant will report to and assist the Executive Director (ED). The primary area of competence for the Assistant has been identified as web design, social media, associational membership, and other IT knowledge and skills. The ED will kick start the recruitment process as soon as possible.

• Appraisal of the Executive Director

ExCo is responsible for the annual review of ED’s job performance. In light of last year’s constitutional changes, the appraisal system is now revised as follows: (1) ExCo remains to be the supreme body for ED’s annual performance review, (2)  A standard survey form will be developed to collect and record each reviewer’s feedback, (3) The list of reviewers includes ExCo members and the Presidents of all Chapters, and (4) The form will be issued by the President, and the results collected will be discussed among the President, Vice President and Past President before an appraisal report will be sent to the ExCo for deliberation and adoption.

I hope all of you find my summary informative enough. I will try to do the same after our Council Meeting to be held on February 22, which incidentally will be the first Council Meeting of both our solar and lunar new year. It will be a fresh start with fresh ideas, since all Committee Chairs will present their year plan in that meeting, and our WAPOR Annual Report of 2023 should also be ready by then. We will be receiving Country Reports from our National Representatives, and we will definitely have more to report about our upcoming Seoul Conference.

Before that, I urge all of you to check out our WAPOR Archive and help us to enhance it with more reference materials. I hope you will bring in more Friends of WAPOR, from your students or co-workers, possibly after sponsoring their registration fee of $10 per year, which will be refunded upon their joining WAPOR as a member. If you are part of an organization, please persuade your organization to join us so as to be listed among our first batch of organizational members. Most important of all, please mark your diary for our July Conference in Seoul. We are expecting all Councillors, Committee Members, National Representatives, and Chapter Leaders to attend meetings in Seoul, while everyone enjoys the process of intellectual exchange and social mingling at the same time.

Humbly yours,

Robert Chung

WAPOR President