AIDA assembly video-conference - 20st of March 2021
1) Follow-up of previous Assembly meetings
1.1 FEMR
The AIDA Medical Officer, Oleg Melikhov, presented the work directions of the Medical Office concerning the FEMR.
1.2 Youth course
The course was very well received, and the only optimization planned is at the level of the exam. The exams are planned to get inline with the well tested AIDA system: passing rate for instructor course will be reduced from 100% to the same 90% as for all other AIDA Instructor courses and the appreciation of the skills for certification will be made by an Instructor Trainer (online). The progression from Youth Instructor to Youth Instructor Trainer will follow the usual AIDA promotion model based which is based on the accumulated experience (quantified objectively on the number of certifications given).
1.3 Tender results and recruitment of General Administrator
The communication agency and the General Administrator have been selected and the lawyers are now handling the contracting procedures
1.4 World Championships
At the January assembly meeting, a decision was taken to set the cut-off date for the Pool WCh confirmation on the 15th of March. The following step was the feed-back request from the Nationals concerning their athlete’s participation. Due to the Covid restrictions, the large majority of nationals gave a negative feedback and Lyubomir Stefanov, the president of the WCh organization committee, presented the serious organizational difficulties, so the final decision taken at the March Assembly meeting was to cancel the Pool World Championship that was scheduled for June 2021.
The autumn Depth World Championship, remains to be seen depending on the evolution of the virus and the vaccination campaigns.
1.5 Budget vote and list of priorities for those interested to participate in the projects
Following the Assembly approval of the 2021 budget, the Board presented the top priority projects for which, the interested volunteers and contractors, are invited to join the work groups:
- Recruitment & training of the General admin
- Entry to the Register of Commerce & opening of EU Bank account
- Legal requirements for data protection
- Creation & implementation of a communication strategy to attract sponsors.
- Publishing of the existing course translations and other existing materials (put text & pictures in a .indd template)
- FEMR course
- Safety course
- Judge course
- Monofin course
- Youth instructor trainers
- Marketing to increase sales of AIDA courses: make AIDA website the Uber of the freediving courses (& competitions).
- Automatization of judge/instructor T shirts delivery (and all eventual new products)
- Community support with SPC (Single Point of Contact)
- Education content manager
- KAM & Market analysis Manager
- Event Coordinator (WCs, Medical conference, etc.)
- Team & Management training
- Optimize user interface for EOS & Announce event
1.6 Technical Office
Guillame Laslo-Toth, Technical Committee member, presented to the Assembly the benefits of the integrated approach to the AIDA rules system with a few practical examples of solutions to the lack of coordination between the different AIDA rules (e.g. To respond to the question “Which National has jurisdiction to approve the competitions organized by members in foreign countries?” Guillame proposed to define the National AIDA in the AIDA Statutes as having monopoly over the territory of the respective country).
2) Discussion on the principles of consistency and stability and their integration in the AIDA system
One of the solutions to increase the stability and reliability of the AIDA certifications is the “certification for life” following the model of a driving license.
To summarize the Assembly discussions, after attending one time a full judge or instructor course, the certified people will not be required anymore to re-take the same course again in any circumstances (except disciplinary cases). The solution for long periods of inactivity or rules/courses updates is the continuous education and the refreshers:
- theory check online (online tests or Zoom with judge instructor / freediving Instructor Trainer)
- physical test validation alternatives: through the official Ranking or through the global AIDA judge network
3) Direct questions to the Board and open discussions
3.1 NGO in China.
Aolin Wang, the President of AIDA China, presented to the Assembly a series of changes requested by the local government and asked AIDA to open directly a representative office in China. All by acknowledging this initiative involves a control of the “International” over the “National” (in direct opposition with the AIDA tradition), the Assembly concluded on making an exception for China and proceeding with the opening of the local representative office.
3.2 GDPR.
The representative of AIDA Germany presented to the Assembly a plan for better data protection inside AIDA. Due to the high level of technicality, the feedback of the Assembly was very limited, but the Board thanked AIDA Germany for the initiative and decided to proceed with the implementation.
The next Assembly meeting will be on the last Saturday of April - the 24th at 1pm UTC
