Word From the Outgoing Scientific Secretary
Dear Colleagues,
My term as scientific secretary is coming to a conclusion after four years. It
says in our constitution that "The term of office of the Scientific Secretary
shall be four years starting from the time of a World Congress of the Society."
At the world congress in Singapore, my term was concluded. Our president works
on the nomination of a new secretary, who will be appointed by the council. This
procedure is also used for the new Treasurer.
It has been a great pleasure and an honour to serve as scientific secretary of
the BS. I started when Don Dawson was president, and served together with
president Peter Jagers and now with president Jean Jacod. During these four
years, we tried to renew BS, to find new vigour, try new ventures, while keeping
our strong traditions in terms of international conferences, standing committees
and our journal. The most important decisions have been related to move the
production of the Bernoulli journal to IMS. I was among the very few to favour a
different solution, which would have given a much better economy to BS,
necessary to start to be more active. The economy we have now does not allow us
to do things.
The world conference in Singapore was our most important production, together
with IMS, and was a very big success, with 600 participants. Bernoulli News has
been a good instrument of communication and an interesting read. Our journals
have high quality, thanks to excellent editors and associated editors. We have
started to look to new areas of the world, where BS should fulfill its mission.
We have taken part in the ongoing restructuring of ISI, within which BS will
continue to play a strong role.
Besides several successes, it is unfortunate that today BS faces many of the
same problems it had when I started as secretary, possibly even worse. I am
worried for BS, and believe that major action has to be taken if we wish to give
to this society a future. We have tried in several directions, but we have
failed to reach our goals. We did not succeed to implement policies that could
increase our membership, attract younger statisticians, and make BS play a role
internationally where needed. The economy of BS is insufficient to do things,
except occasionally, while continuity would be needed. We discussed merger with
younger societies, we tried new ventures with little success. The way we
communicate through our web page is insufficient. The European Young
Statistician training camp in Oslo was a very good experience for more than a
hundred young friends, but it was not followed up by more events of the same
type.
Friendship and collaboration with IMS are important and a plus for BS. IMS is a
very lively and rich society. While US based, it has an international mission
(see recent China move). It has been lead by excellent leaders, who have never
favoured domestic themes, and always had an autonomous standing with respect to
US national politics. Despite this, I believe that we need a truly international
society, like the ISI and BS represent. There are situations, as we saw in our
history, where it simply matters to be international.
What are the problems: lack of mission, lack of funding, and competing
societies. It is good to have traditions, but we need more out-look. Statistical
science is evolving and changes in our discipline need to be followed up by BS
in terms of its role.
Hence, I hope very much that BS can continue and grow! ISI is changing and BS
will find in this ISI a new home, a way to start acting. As a member of BS, I
will continue to do my part.
With very best regards,
The deadline for the next issue is March 30, 2009.
Please email submissions as plain text to the
Editors:
Erik van Zwet and Eric Cator.