The first AIDA Executive Board meeting of the new board has been held.
There will be an Executive Board meeting the first Sunday every month. A report will be delivered to the Assembly after each meeting.
Urgent call to all members! We need to find all missing competition results from 2009. You may have to re-send results that have already been sent in. Please contact: aidaranking@gmail.com and CC: ivo@apnea.cz.
During the first Executive Board meeting (attended by Kimmo, Pia, Greg, Sebastian, Pim (in parts)), Kimmo outlined his vision of how the Executive board should work. He spoke about a lot of autonomy for the commissions. The Executive Board is already talking about new working groups (possible commissions) such as science/medical, media/PR and an IT work group.
The Information Technology Work group, (possible future commission), was formed by the president on the day he was elected. Sebastian Nasland, the media/PR officer is the Executive Board representative on the ITC. So far, the ITC has seen a lot of activity from Jonas A, Simo K, Ivo T, Eric P, also in the group, Paulo N and Peter S. Based on the freedivercentral foundation, Simos work from 2008 and Ivo´s work – this group is well on their way to delivering the first structure of a ranking system.
Pia (secretary) supported by Kimmo are working on making AIDA?s financial situation clear. The services of an accounting firm are being researched. Pia will also be responsible for updating contact details of people important for AIDA. Thus, we will soon be looking through the assembly members database.
A working group aimed at producing a fourth draft of the statutes has been formed. Robert King (attorney from USA) is leading this. Also in this group is Grant Graves (vice president), Christian Ernest (Aida Sweden), Petar Bojovic (attorney), Sebastian Naslund with some other people involved in reviewing the work.
Before the Executive Board meeting Dr. John Fitz-Clarke, Science/Medical Officer, proposed to research if AIDA can setup an AIDA FREEDIVER medical form that can guide doctors when they do medical exams specific to freediving. Dr. Fitz-Clarke would like organizers to report any situation where freedivers with medical problems have slipped through the screening process.
There is also a desire to discuss what is really needed in a competition when it comes to medical competence. Setting the standard too high and we make competitions complicated, too low and we are putting our freedivers at risk. Old procedures will have to be evaluated, since our understanding of blackout, DCS and squeeze has increased recently. We will base our decisions not only on experience, but also on the scientific data available.
Stavros Kastrinakis, Education Officer, and the Education Commission will be involved with these issues as well.
The Science Commission will be building connections with active apnea researchers. There is a lack of communication between scientists due to a potential “competition situation”, perhaps AIDA can bridge this gap in some cases and build a “community feeling”.
Kimmo Lahtinen, President, has ideas about building bridges between AIDA and DAN. Pim Vermeulen, Sport Officer, has already taken initiatives to building closer connections between AIDA and WADA (the doping agency).
Gregory Piazzola, Technical Officer, has already chosen three members for the Technical Commission (TC): Grant Graves (Judge A Instructor), Pim Vermeulen (Judge A), and Florent Pascal (national judge/lawyer). Several experts will be linked to this commission. One issue that the TC will address is how to help judges, organizers, athletes facing «out of rules» situations and report these situations to others judges. Gregory wants to see debate on how to reduce BO during the individual championships. A new version of the rules is planned before the end of the year.
The TC, the Sport Officer, and the Media/PR Commission will be working with the organizers of the Team WC 2010 in Okinawa with the aim of making it a big and successful event.
The Media/PR Commission is looking for volunteers with a background in journalism, graphic design, and video/photography. Igor Liberti, Anneli Pompe, Chris Marshall, and Christian Engelbrecht have offered their services. Peter S. and the ITC will be in close co-operation.
The Sport Officer will as always be working with all competitions, records related subjects, requirements for being in the AIDA Calendar, and result-list checking, etc.
Together with the Responsible for Judges, the Sport Officer will work on judge education and development. Comments on the rules by the judges will be processed by the Sport Officer and the TC for possible development. The Sport Officer and the Responsible for Judges will be in charge of Jury selection for WR attempts.
The Sport Officer will also be working with many outside contacts like doping, insurance, partnerships etc.
Any competitions should be announced to the Sport Officer through calendar@aida-international.org, results can be send to pim.vermeulen@aida-international.org
All payments for ranking, cards, annual fees, etc. are put on hold until the financial responsibilities has been solved.
Next board meeting will be February 7 where every commission will deliver a plan for 2010, to be presented to the Assembly later.
AIDA Executive Board
As reported earlier, this year the AIDA world championships will be a team event that will take place in Japan. The website has just opened and some first information can be found over there. Take a look here.
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