TranslatePresident's Letter August 2022
Offenbach, August 2022
Dear friends and colleagues,
Our AM 2022 at the end of June/beginning of July is over since some weeks and we took a (northern hemisphere) summer break after this highlight for many of us. In retrospect this was a very engaging, connecting, warm and nourishing event – presented from the former Moscow, then international AM Team. Thank you again and thanks to all of you who participated and contributed, it meant a lot to all of us who could participate. A small group of people even managed to come to Frankfurt and – what shall I say – it was really good to see some of the ISPSO members face-to-face. I must admit that I was longing for this and it worked out very well.
The next AM team 2023 has already started to work: Rica Viljoen and Thabo Mofomme as Co-Chairs working together with Michelle May, Calum McComb and Adrian Parsadh. It will take place next year from 26th of June to 2nd of July, we have a wonderful venue, which we have entirely for our own, where we stay overnight and work together. Have a look at 26thdegrees south hotel: https://www.facebook.com/26DSOUTH. The theme will be
“Tsoseletso – Resurfacing Soul, Circularity and Spirituality in organisations”
The call for papers will soon come out. Please save the date for this hybrid conference. This event will take place in the spirit of our first strategic objective – creating and integrating different ways of psychodynamic thinking and working – it will be very different from our usual AMs since some traditional African (healer) elements will play a key role in that.
Before the AM we had our regular board meeting, which was the first physical board meeting since 2019. It was wonderful to sit together, work together and of course eat and drink together.
After having done final preparations for the AM, we worked on our governance. We have now established 5 clear cut and durable board director roles in addition to the five ones already existing (President, President elect, Treasurer, Admin Director, Past President). These new director roles are Director for Social Media (Pearl), for Professional Development (Thea), for Events (Aaron), for Professional Interorganizational Collaboration (Ajeet) and for Marketing (Claudia). It makes it easier for us and for you that you know who has which responsibilities.
We have as always thought about how to improve our collaboration and we have worked of course on strategic initiatives which will come into being over the next weeks and month. The three objectives (Integration, Connection to the outside world and Governance) will stay but we will focus this year more on connecting with the outside world – after the website has been set up anew, which was a major undertaking. It shall serve more than in the past as a platform for exchange, cooperation, sharing between us and with the outer world consisting of the organizations (and systems) and their leaders as our focus of work.
This leads me to next point which connects well with last one: next year ISPSO will have its 40th birthday. And we would like to celebrate that with you. We have already brainstormed and developed some ideas, but we would like to ask for your contribution. I invite you to become member of the birthday planning committee – please write an email to me if you want to participate, maybe with a sentence or two on your motivation – president@ispso.net.
An important meeting will be taking place online on the 15th of September, in which the Anti-Racism Group will tackle the major theme of Antisemitism – Gilles Amado and Halina Brunning are responsible for it.
The first regional meeting of this ISPSO year will take place in Melbourne/Australia on the 6th of October, if you want to know more please write to Aaron Nurick (ANURICK@bentley.edu), our event director, or to Rob Ryan (rob@wisdompluswork.com.au), who is one of the local organizers.
I would like to heartly welcome all our new members, who have joined since the AM. I hope you will enjoy the experience with us as a network of members and a platform for connecting, learning, sharing and creating new insights together.
Warm regards and wherever you are and whatever you do, please stay well and healthy
Claudia
President and CEO of ISPSO