IPCAA NEWSLETTER

Everyone will remember the air travel disruption caused by the ash cloud originating from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland, which first brought chaos and inconvenience to thousands of people and organisations in mid-April.

IPCAA was also not immune from the effects of flight cancellations and airport closures; two planned events had to be cancelled because of the situation - the Council meeting and also the Housing Forum, planned for the period 19-21 April.

It proved to be a really trying time, with several of our Council members “trapped” in various locations around the world, desperately exploring possibilities to return home, quite apart from the challenge of getting to the meetings planned for Gothenburg!

This unfortunate scenario encouraged the implementation of something which the IPCAA Executive Group had been considering for some time – a virtual meeting, which was set up as a means of partially compensating for the loss of the Council meeting.

A WebEx event was quickly scheduled and took place in early May. Whilst not all Council members could join the WebEx, due to the continuing impact of the earlier problems on appointment diaries and revised commitments, there were useful discussions and exchanges from the participants involved.

Various topics were discussed during the two hour event and progressed via the combination of telephone and Internet links. Pre-prepared presentation material was displayed to support the information on which questions and discussions were based, resulting in the opportunity to review as a group significant issues such as budgets, task force projects, updates on educational activity and plans for future events. In addition, progress on the 2010 IPCAA strategic action plan was highlighted.

Most of those taking part were experiencing this format for the first time – everyone concerned felt the format offered a very useful way of setting up a positive interactive dialogue facility. However, not surprisingly, it was definitely seen, that however sophisticated any type of virtual event might be, the networking and “face to face” experiences provided by physical meetings are not to be ignored.

Nevertheless, the IPCAA team really feel that further virtual meetings of this kind could contribute to both improved communication as well as also delivering the benefit of cost savings compared with the conventional style of meeting. The Executive Group will continue to study this aspect further, in order to identify an appropriate future balance for IPCAA between virtual and physical meetings.