Per:

Having, I think, started thiss debate, I want to stress that I have never 
suggested that local professionals who are not ICOM members, particularly 
in developing couuntries, and other deserving cases such as specialist 
students - should be excluded from ICOM meetings. At the ICTOP meeting in 
India last year we certainly had a number of these - plus one or two 
clearly genuine senior professionals under the ICOM definition who had been 
trying unsuccesssfully to appply for membership through the National 
Committee for a long time - but that is a different story.

However, I do think that in general people who can afford the typically 
many hundreds of dollars (or more) to travel to distant locations and stay 
in hotels for a week cannot plead poverty in rfespect of the ICOM 
membership fee.

In my experience we have certainly had some of these at ICTOP meetings ...

In any case I still want to stress the urgent need for the on-line 
membership database - first promised about five years ago.

 

Patrick Boylan  


===============================

On Aug 26 2003, Per Bjørn Rekdal wrote:

> Dear colleagues,
> 
> I agree with George Abungu that fake conference registrations are not
> really a problem once you are aware of their excistence and knows how to
> deal with them. The intention at the outset was to find out how common
> they are. And thank you to colleague Nath i Nigeria who promptly sorted
> out the 5 fake registrations to the ICME conference.
> 
> But: It has by some been referred to the need to have online lists of ICOM
> members. I hope this does not lead to the conclusion that the conferences
> of the international committees should only be open to ICOM members.
> 
> Most of our colleagues in economically disadvantaged countries cannot
> afford to be ICOM members - even with the lowest fee. For ICME it has been
> unthinkable not to accept them as participants in our conferences. Even
> more so because their funding will generally be secured through
> recommendations on a national level. That means that their participation
> is considered important for the country they come from.
> 
> The highly successful ICME conference in Zambia last year would have been
> nothing if we demanded ICOM membership from every participant.
> 
> Having non-ICOM members as participants in conferences (especially from
> the host country) is also a good opportunity for recruitment and may bring
> in new knowledge and ideas.
> 
> (Lastly: I do not mean that AFRICOM should act as a sort of police. Merely
> that - considering that fake registrations so far do come from Africa, and
> in our case we have this time had more fakes than real ones, and the fake
> ones will surely be more cleverly expressed after some years - giving
> general advice regarding what kind of information it is wise to send
> along, so that their registration is not by accident met with the delete
> button, might be useful for our African colleagues. It would be bad if
> they in the future become the victims of fake registrations from
> international criminals (probably based in Europe).)
> 
> Kind regards
> 
> Per
> 
> Per B. Rekdal
> ICME
> 

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