News

The ESCCA board had its annual face to face meeting that took place this year in between two Euroconferences. Because of the heavy agenda, it was decided to have a 3 days meeting on 3-5 February in Milano Airport.

And indeed the agenda was pretty full and raised a lot of discussions. The main proposals that have reached a consensus are:

• Education : ESCCA wishes to lead a European initiative on education of clinical cytometry together with the national societies. This includes:  Common program framework, possibly share documents/toolboxes, a common standard that should lead to a European certificate; additional courses (“Summer school”) program. The first summer school is planned in July 2012, in Urbino and it is concerning basic cytometry. Next year more courses on advanced cytometry (in hematology, immunology, cytomics, microparticles….) will be organized and a project will be submitted to the European Community for grants. The Summer School will be typically 6 days on site courses with theory in the morning and practice in the afternoon, in English and the national language and will be taught by multinational speakers.

• Euroconferences : The board has worked on the organization of meetings in Budapest and has decided that the 2013 meeting will be in Luxemburg co-organised with the Dutch, Luxemburg and Belgium societies. Because the venue was highly booked, it was decided that the meeting will be exceptionally held in NOVEMBER 2013. The future sites are under consideration: Lisbon (2014?) UK, Malta, Slovenia, Nordic country…

• Partnership : ESCCA would like to increase its partnership with the societies on cell analysis and proposes to exchange, web links, information on meetings, courses… together with the education proposal. The board proposes to meet the Presidents of all national societies during a dinner in Budapest. ESCCA would also like to have closer collaboration with industrials interested in cytometry education and good practices and proposes to meet them for building up a strategy.

• Need for active participation : The ESCCA business and plans are still very full. Standing committees should be more active and more active participants are welcome to help in developing ESCCA activities.

• The board committee renewal : all candidates but one have been elected in one go in 2009 and are finishing their mandate end of 2012. The board must be renewed during the next general Assembly. In order to increase the member participation to the vote, it was proposed to use the electronic vote that will be completed during the GA. Candidates for this election must contact B. Brando.  There is a concern to get to a graduate renewal of the board in order not to have a full replacement at one time that may make its management difficult for the new, inexperienced members. A graduate replacement must be organized. Similarly, the audit committee members must be alternatively renewed and one position is available for next year.

• The membership is rising gradually every year but still ESCCA has to grow up and encourage people to join. Please help us and invite your contacts, collaborators to become members and as much as possible active ones. The statutes also propose an Honorary membership for people who had a high contribution to cytometry. Any candidature can be proposed by the members. Two candidates will be proposed in Budapest.

• Financial report : the finances have been analyzed on an old system edited in a very unfriendly way. The details have been submitted to a professional book keeper for a first look and after that they will be analyzed by the auditing committee before submission to the General Assembly.

-          Finally, ESCCA Status : in several respects, the Association Statutes makes ESCCA management difficult. The board has worked on it and made proposals to improve its practicality. The proposals need to be checked for legality by a notary.

-          Then the statutes changes will be sent to the members, submitted to discussion by mails and will be voted during an exceptional General Assembly that will be scheduled in Budapest.

The secretary