Minutes of ESCA General Assembly - Rhodes, 1997

Tuesday, Sept. 23, 1997, 18:45 hrs, room Delphi in Rodos Palace Hotel, during Eurospeech'97 in Rhodes, Greece

The ESCA General Assembly was openend by ESCA president Louis Pols, who welcomed the ca. 50 members present.

He then gave his presidential report with a short overview of the activities in the past two years (a.o. 7 ETRWs since Sept. 1995) and a presentation of some of the plans for the future (more ETRWs and ESCA-supported events, Eurospeech'99 in Budapest, international contacts, new-style NESCA, relations with Speech Communication, Advisory Council, new membership policy). A full report can be found in NESCA-20. There was some discussion, and there were some requests for further information, about several of these points from the audience.

The treasurer then presented his financial report about the past 2 years as well as the budget for the coming two years. The financial situation of ESCA is rather healthy so that f.i. more money for student grants could be budgetted. However, we must remain conservative to have sufficient reserves for covering the substantial yearly expenses.

Both the presidential and the treasurer report were approved by the audience.

Next the proposed changes in the statutes were presented for formal approval. The exact text of these changes was made public during Eurospeech'97 well before this meeting. They concern the European (rather than Western European) status of the Board members, the minimum number of Board members being 5 (rather than limiting this between 5 and 9), and a related clause concerning presence of Board members for deliberations to be valid (at least half of them, rather than 4), and finally skipping the requirement for the Advisory Council to actually meet every two years. After some discussion these changes weer approved.

Then the results of the Board election were presented. Four Board members will have to resign, because they served the maximum of two full terms (Jens Blauert, Bjorn Granstrom, Joseph Mariani, and Louis Pols). Their support to ESCA over more than 8 years was highly appreciated. Since the members did not use their right to propose additional candidates, the following four new members automatically became elected to the Board: Gerrit Bloothooft, Rolf Carlson, Wolfgang Hess, and George Kokkinakis. Furthermore Maria Gosy will be added to the Board as an CEE observer.

Since the new Board already had an opportunity to meet before the General Assembly, it could be announced that they had elected amongst their midst Roger Moore as the new president. Louis Pols handed over the presidency to him.

The General Assembly was closed after properly thanking the leaving president and wishing the new president and his crew much luck and success.