ISGE.ORG :

After the downward spiral the Society experienced before Kauala Lumpur 2004 and its partial revival between 2004 and 2007 it is now the time for major changes to make the Society competitive on the International scene. If no fundamental changes will be made the future of the Society is in jeopardy.

Over the last years I have witnessed the difficulties our Society has to communicate and make decisions not withstanding the good will and the hard work of the people involved. In my opinion most of the problems are related to the archaic and out-dated structure of our Society including ExCo and Board: as an example I cite our Bylaws that have not been changed since 1996 still carrying the Haarlem address and do not state the legal form of the Society�

I would therefore suggest, if the Board accepts me as the new Vice-President, to take on the occasion to rewrite the Bylaws, with the full support of the incoming President, to incorporate fundamental updates and changes. I therefore commit myself :

To work hard to find financial support to give the necessary stability to the Society. We have to incorporate new permanent Sponsors to guarantee a stable early income for our Society not to depend on Congress income and Membership dues alone. I have been quite busy in this sector preparing the Bari Congress and I therefore know that there are Companies willing to make the step on condition that the Society is restructured and gains stability
If given the opportunity, to elaborate the idea to assure a yearly stable Congress income of about 30.000 $ to be paid to the Society on a date set by contract, trough a PCO, before the Congress. This amount of money has to be calculated, also, reflecting the decisions taken in this matter by other large Endoscopic Societies in order to be able to set-up joint-ventures with these Societies
To try and enhance the communication between ExCo and Board. We need to simplify the decision-maker structure in order to shorten the time actually needed for any valuable decision
To use my strong relationship with some key-members of the AAGL, the actual President and vice-President of the ESGE, the EcCo of the SIAEGI and other well-known Endoscopic Society, to establish an International network of Endoscopic Society
To offer to our member new features for training and e-learning, using all the power related to Internet and to the actual web-based audio-visual facilities

This process will need the collaboration of all our Board and members to get results in a relative short time, re-qualifying our Society.