CIGR Newsletter No 36

YOUR BENEFIT OF BELONGING TO A WORLDWIDE NETWORK CAN BE INCREASED

Today the world has become much smaller than it was when we went to school. Air travel to almost anywhere in the world is now commonplace for a large number of people, including agricultural engineers. When going to a different country and even another continent, a high priority interest for most of us always is to see if there is anything new to pick up that we do not know yet from back home. Even leisure travelling is commonly combined with professional visits and a combination with conference attendance is certainly much used.

Facilitating such knowledge transfer and contact is a prime objective of CIGR. One of the means in facilitating such contacts is the use of the Events Calendar. Another is the Directory of Agricultural Engineering Institutions. Both are paths along which contacts can be established.

Next is to facilitate a good reception, recognising your 'belonging to us' - status. Here CIGR will introduce to its member societies an agreement about mutual rights within the network. In short the proposal is that any visiting AE from a foreign AE-society shall be admitted to meetings, conferences, etc. open to all members at member prices. The visitor must however prove by membership card or equivalent that he has a valid membership in his home society. The host society must recognise whether his home society has a valid CIGR-connection. To facilitate this verification CIGR will have to keep membership files available.

If accepted by the CIGR General Assembly this has the above-mentioned advantages for you as a personal member in your society. It has also consequences for your society, namely: It will have to supply you with proof of membership (card with name and ID). It is recommendable that this card also shows the CIGR-logo, showing your society's valid CIGR-connection.

Rotarians have the right to attend any Rotary meeting in the World by showing their membership card. And they use this right to a considerable extent. With the above proposal accepted and implemented agricultural engineers will be no less friendly to one another. So come on, let us save money and make friends.

Egil Berge,
President.

ADVERTISEMENT ACQUISITION

From now on CIGR Newsletter will also contain some advertising. This is part of a plan for a future financial strategy for CIGR that was delivered recently from a Task Force set up by the Executive Board. The Task Force was chaired by Yoshisuke Kishida, President of Shin-Norinsha Co. Ltd. and Chief Editor of the AMA Magazine, Vice President of the Asian Association of Agricultural Engineers and International Director of ASAE. As this Newsletter is spread to about 2000 key specialists in agricultural engineering in about 90 countries, its value for advertising for those companies which really go for international marketing, was probably underestimated. The availability of the Newsletter on Internet under CIGR's homepage adds to the total circulation. The new advertisement feature necessitates acquisition of advertising from the member countries. Its success depends on the members devoted willingness to assist the General Secretariat in this respect. The Task Force envisages that a separate committee or Work Group be formed to carry this responsibility. This issue will be discussed at the CIGR meetings in Madrid in September.

Egil Berge, President.

CIGR WITH NEW ABSTRACT SERVICE ON INTERNET

A lot of new research results, new developments and experience is presented at more or less national conferences in agricultural engineering, or in related conferences of interest to the Ag Eng professionals. To attend such conferences cost time and money. Most of us go to very few, also because they are held in national languages as French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Russian - i.e. foreign to most others. But why not make this material more accessible to all CIGR members?

This was the thinking by the President of the Association Française du Génie Rural, Ir Jean-Claude Souty. He proposed that CIGR puts up an Abstract Service on Internet, under CIGR's homepage. CIGR receives abstracts (in English) from their national member societies as soon as any national conference deemed interesting has taken place. The service will include necessary addresses for getting more complete information and/or translation for those interested.

The new service is entirely free of cost for the users and may continue so. To be successful however, it is absolutely necessary that every national association takes action and makes somebody responsible for supplying CIGR with these abstracts in English. It should be a prime interest of the conference organiser to do likewise. Better sales of proceedings and reprints may follow and maybe more foreign attendants to the conference next time.

When starts this service? It started several months ago by the French Association AFGR. Please join without delay, there is plenty of space on the net server computer.

Egil Berge, President.

CIGR CONFERENCE SERVICE ON INTERNET ADDS NEW FEATURES

Completing the accessible information

Under CIGR's homepage by clicking 'Events Calendar' you now get a chronologically ordered listing of upcoming conferences of interest for agricultural engineers. Name of the conference, location, date, and an address where additional information can be obtained. More than 50 conferences are now listed. This service may be enhanced a lot, provided good cooperation with conference organisers that make use of the Internet can be achieved. The next step will be that the conference organiser creates a conference homepage on their own net server and places full conference information including registration form, programme etc. there. The organiser will then inform CIGR General Secretariat about the URL-address of this homepage. The CIGR Events Calendar will then add a link to this homepage. This gives you immediately full on-line access to all available information which will then be the last update given by the organiser. You may fill in the registration form and send it by e-mail right away (but keep your own paper copy for later use). Money transfer however, will still have to use other routes. Electronic exchange of money and use of credit card IDs internationally is still an unsafe procedure. Here we will await the development of more secure systems.

The service mentioned above will be established for the AgEng'98 Conference in Oslo. Some conference organisers already received abstracts and even complete papers as attached files to their conference e-mail address, in this way saving time and money. The key to all this is to know 'where to look' to get that address and be sure to find it. This 'where' is CIGR's Events Calendar. Starting there will give you a hit.

Listing of conference proposals as means of co-ordinated scheduling

One of the original ideas with the CIGR Calendar of events was, and still is, to use it as a central information pool and basis for better co-ordination of conference scheduling, both in choice of time and topic. This is mainly in the interest of all conference organisers as well as the participants. No one really wants to organise or make preparations to go to a conference attracting but a few. But that is an unavoidable consequence of conferences set up too close in both time, topics and geographic location. They address the same audience at the same time.

Many call for CIGR to be the co-ordinator here. Inside Europe before EurAgEng this did function to a certain extent, as co-ordinated annual meetings in Paris were used to make a schedule. Today's increasing number of conferences put up by many independent authors, and the wider scope for all continents call for new ways of doing this. CIGR's Calendar of Events offers a new section for “Conference proposals”.

Any organiser may post here their first intention for time, place and main topics, and let it remain for some time while he receives possible comments and watches similar information about other proposals. Final decision on time, place and topics can then be made with less risk because the committee has watched and taken into consideration other known conference plans as far as known. And those not yet known came too late and are likely to see that they better adjust their plans.

The clue is to make early information available at a certain place where it is well known to be. Who comes first with their vague plans to make them known? CIGR will sure receive it well.

CIGR Webmaster Work Group

A CIGR Webmaster Work Group has recently been formed. It consists so far of the following persons:

Anybody else who wants to join this Work Group to enhance and provide input to the CIGR Internet services should contact these three persons and the CIGR General Secretariat.

ASAE CHANGES EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT

After ten years of service as Executive Vice President for ASAE Roger Castenson was well known by a large number of people in all continents as the face of ASAE. Since August 1 this year he is no longer to be found in this position. He and his wife wanted to move “back to Texas”, where his roots and his family are. Castenson did know CIGR fairly well and attended a number of our meetings on behalf of ASAE. He and ASAE Headquarters last year hosted CIGR's Executive Board in a very pleasant and professional way in St. Joseph, Michigan. On behalf of CIGR we wish him good luck in his further career.

Now managing ASAE Headquarters is Russell Hahn, appointed by ASAE President Allen Rider as Interim Executive Vice President for a year or so. The organisation plans to search well for a new wonder boy (or girl ?) who can take the organisation into the next century.

It is our hope that Russell Hahn will continue to strengthen links and cooperation between ASAE and other AgEng societies through dedicated use of the CIGR Network. We wish him welcome and look forward to work with him.

Egil Berge, President CIGR.

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