59th IPC PLENARY MEETING 2008

PARIS, FRANCE, 26TH - 27TH JANUARY 2008

27th January 2008, FIAP Centre, Paris, France

The final details were dealt with by mid-day. The budget approved, after some changes to that presented originally. This will be inculded in the minutes when they are published.

The Plenary voted for the 2 year term of office for the Bureau as agreed at the last FAI General Conference. This to be adopted from today, so the election which followed for the Bureau members will be the last election for two years.

Graeme Windsor was re-appointed as the President, unanimously. Gillian Winter was also re-appointed as 1st Vice-President. Thomas Touminen had announced his resignation as Vice President (one of two) due to time constraints and his wish to continue as Chair of the Canopy Piloting Committee. Nominations were made for the positions of Vice President and Marylou Laughlin and John Smyth received the majority of the votes. Buzz Bennett and Liam McNulty were reconfirmed in the positions of Treasurer and Technical Secretary. There were no changes to the Committee Chairs.

The meeting ended with the decision not to go to Lausanne for the 2009 IPC Meeting, and the bids between Krakov, Poland and Vaesteras, Sweden were voted on and Vaesteras will be the venue for the next IPC Plenary Meeting.

26th January 2008, FIAP Centre, Paris, France

Today the formal proceedings start. The first day of the plenary.

The Minutes of the meeting will be published on this web site shortly, and most of today's proceedings were formal approvals of each Committees' presentation. The discussion and subsequent changes happening at the open meetings earlier this week, and the closed committee sessions.

Max Bishop, FAI Secretary General confirmed that there were 38 votes present at the meeting (including proxy votes) which gave a majority figure of 20 and two thirds figure of 26.

The first major decision (other than formal proceedural decisions) was the approval and decision between the two bids to host the 2008 Freefall Style and Accuracy Landing World Championships. This was between the bids from Russia and Slovakia. The 2008 World Championships was awarded to Slovakia with 24 votes (a simple majority needed).

The next was the approval of the bid from USA to host the first World Cup in Vertical Formation Skydiving. Previously referred to as Vertical Relative Work - the name change was a result of the decision to include this new event within Formation Skydiving and the remit of the Formation Skydiving Committee.

The Canopy Formation World Championships 2008 late bid from the Netherlands was accepted by the Plenary, firstly to be included as an Agenda Item and secondly to be approved as a host for the WPC.

Canopy Piloting also had two bids on the table to host the 2008 World Championships, South Africa and Australia. The event was awarded to South Africa by 33 votes.

The following agenda items proceeded with very little discussion or contention.

There were no nominations for the FAI Gold Parachuting Medal award. The President, Mr. Graeme Windsor addressed the Plenary and asked that serious consideration be given to the honour and publicity that can be attracted to Parachuting with such awards and that in future he hoped that delegations will give serious consideration to nominating people within their community.

The Faust Vrancic Medal for outstanding technical contribution to the sport had received a nomination from Denmark that it be awarded to Mr. Ted Wagner and Mr. Larry Hill, this was overwhelmingly approved by the Plenary.

The day ended with a banquet for all delegates and guests of the IPC on a boat on the Seine. Delegates had an opportunity to see the beautiful city of light - Paris - by night.

Tomorrow the final business of the meeting, with any other business, will be followed by the confirmation of the committees and working groups, and then the Bureau.

Following a decision made at the FAI General Conference, IPC now has the possibility of electing the Bureau and officers for a two year, as opposed to the current one year, term. There is a proposal that this be voted on before the voting commences, which was accepted, and will be considered by the plenary tomorrow morning.

25th January 2008, FIAP Centre, Paris, France

Another 8.30 start with the Judges Committee. Pia Berggren, Chair of the committee commenced by paying tribute to the contribution made to the committee and the sport and judging in general by Klaus Wellens, who sadly, died during the year.

As usual they covered the judges lists received from delegations and asked that the delegates checked the posted lists to ensure there were no mistakes. The lists of available judges for selection for the two World Championships in 2008, i.e. Formation Skydiving and Artistic Events were also posted and need to be checked for errors. Once any futher World Championships proposals have been accepted by the Plenary, delegates have until 29th February 2008 to ensure the Judges committee receive their lists of available judges for those competitions in 2008.

The committee also talked about 1/2 speed judging and that they will work with the FS Committee by reporting the results of various trials at competitions throughout the year. They further covered various housekeeping rule changes that would be proposed for ratification at the plenary.

The Judges open meeting was to be followed by presentations from three organisations that had Judging Scoring Systems for consideration by IPC. The electronic scoring system that had been used internationally for many years no longer allowed judges and competitions to take advantage of digital video management and so new systems were being looked at. There was general discussion about who had the responsability of "approving" a system for use at a 1st Category event. And this was passed between the judges committee, the various disciplines committees and the Bureau, with the judges being tasked with making recommendations.

The morning then continued with the three presentations. Dartfish, who had presented in Florence in 2007, but as Klaus Wellens had been working closely with them on the development of their system it had rather stalled out with his death. The British CamScore Scoring System which had been developed commercially in the UK and was in use already. Finally the system sponsored by the French Parachute Federation and developed as "freeware" by a computer engineer and member of the FFP Board and a team of final year computer engineering students. The French system had been used at the French and German National Championships and French Cup competitions during 2007.

Both the British and the French systems were set up in different rooms for judges and interested delegates to visit, trial and ask questions during the afternoon.

The afternoon and evening was then given over to final closed committee meetings.

The 59th Plenary Session starts at 10.00 a.m. tomorrow morning.

24th January 2008, FIAP Centre, Paris, France

An early start this morning; 8.30 am and a presentation from the Finance Working Group of the Profit and Loss Account for the year, by Buzz Bennett, the Treasurer. This generated a lively and at times quite heated discussion regarding the “pot” of money, nominally belonging to IPC, but held centrally by the FAI. Graeme explained that this was an ongoing situation that had been discussed over the years by his predecessor and the Bureau, and he would continue to seek, with the Bureau, a solution that would benefit the skydiving community.

This open meeting was followed by the Formation Skydiving Committee meeting, which also generated a good discussion. The first change proposed by the committee for consideration at the meeting was the use of ½ speed for the judging process. There was a detailed discussion as to how this was to be implemented and the Judges’ committee agreed to find a way to trial this method over the coming year and report back to the committee on their findings. It was also suggested the judging of the “freeze frame” would be as a simple two dimensional image – to be judged as presented in the freeze frame with no interpretation of the image.

Vertical Formation Skydiving had been discussed by both the Artistic Events and Formation Skydiving Committees and it had been decided that this event would be taken within the remit of Formation Skydiving, as had been requested by the competitors. The USA had a bid for consideration by the Plenary to host a World Cup in Vertical Formation Skydiving in Eloy, Arizona on 26-28 October. Wind Tunnel competitions had also been discussed, and if these competitions were to come within the scope of IPC then the Formation Skydiving Subcommittee would be happy to help with the rules.

Any rule changes this year would be housekeeping only as this was a World Championship Year. The selection of teams for the World Air Games, 2009 would be made based on the results from the World Championships in Maubeuge this year. The results of the 4-way Open event and the 4-way Female event would be combined and the top 4 teams would be selected.

After a much needed coffee break the morning continued with the Canopy Formations Committee. After presenting a short report on the activities during 2007 and the statement that there would be no major rule changes this year, just simple housekeeping tidying.

The Committee was pleased to announce a bid had been received to host the World Championships 2008 by the Netherlands for 8-14 September. These championships would be for all disciplines with the option once the Championships were completed to run an 8-way speed competition. This late bid has to be approved by the Plenary on the Saturday for inclusion on the Agenda.

Despite the poor take up of the Web Challenge announced during 2007 by CF competitors the committee wished to continue with this new competition and so would run another event during 2008. This time it would be well publicised and, with the approval of the Plenary, would offer prizes.

The committee ended its presentation by applauding those members present who had taken part in the recent 100 way record and to offer congratulations to all those from the world wide Canopy Formation skydiving community who had been part of this record.

During the short break before lunch small meetings took place to clarify and work to finalise the changes and modifications to committee proposals as a result of the various discussions at the open meetings.

After lunch it was the turn of the Style and Accuracy committee to make their presentation on their disciplines. After reporting on the 2007 activities and competitions the committee announced that they had no proposals for major rule changes and like the other committees would restrict their work on the rules to general housekeeping and tidying. They did report that the change last year to the 2cm disc had been a success; being accepted by the competitors and resulting in the achievement of separation between competitors.

There were two bids for consideration by the Plenary to host the 2008 World Championships, from the Republic of Slovakia and Russia. Both countries presented their bids to those present for the meeting. A decision will be made between the two bids on Saturday by the Plenary.

Montenegro was also present to outline their plan to bid for the World Championships in 2010. They will now work on the formal preparation of that bid to present to the Plenary in January 2009.

The penultimate committee to hold an open meeting was the Canopy Piloting Committee. Again they outlined the results of the competition held in 2007 and announced they intended to apply for a sum within the budget for 2008 to purchase electronic judging equipment for the speed event.

They were looking at introducing a team event in the future and also considering Free Style. Both these events are currently happening on the Swoop circuit. There was also a plan to look at a change to the scoring system, currently % based.

They had also received two bids to host the World Championships in 2008, one from Australia and one from South Africa. The Australian bid was presented by their delegate but as on one was present from South Africa their bid was available as an Agenda Item. Both bids would be considered and voted on by the Plenary.

The committee was currently working on a Technical Course Directors Check List which would be available for downloading off this web site once completed.

The final formal open meeting of the day was the Sporting Code Working Group of Gillian Winter and Buzz Bennett who presented the proposed changes, additions, deletions, and clarifications to the Sporting Code and Internal Regulations they had worked on during the year. These changes and alterations were a result of proposals, situations, and general development of the rules that govern our sport. There was discussion and suggestions and input from the floor, which will be incorporated into the final proposals placed before the Plenary on Saturday for ratification.

The day ended with a presentation on Wingsuit Flying in the same way that the previous day had ended with a presentation of Speed Skydiving. Not all delegates were able to attend these presentations as various committee meetings were taking place to finalise the proposals for the Plenary. Another early start tomorrow, with the Judges Committee followed by presentations of various electronic judging systems.

23rd January 2008 - FIAP Centre, Paris. 9.30 this morning the IPC meeting started with the general meetings in preparation for the Plenary Meeting 26/27th January when all the decisions on the direction our sport will go in the future will be voted on. The morning started with a welcome from the President of the French Parachuting Federation, our hosts for this year's meeting.

Graeme Windsor then talked about the general issues to be looked at this meeting and introduced Jean Marc Badan from the FAI who gave a well prepared and presented Who and Why about the FAI and also the new concept World Air Games due to take place in Turin, Italy June 2009. After a coffee break the open committee meetings commenced with Para-Ski chaired by Michael Egger who introduced the rule changes that have been approved by the Bureau for the World Cup to take place in Donnersbachwald, details on this web site.

The delegates then broke for lunch. Immediately after lunch the committees utilised the small meeting rooms to discuss their position on matters that would unfold during the coming days; proposed rule changes, bids for World Championships and World Cups, the World Air Games and the World Games. We then returned to the main meeting room for a presentation from the Safety and Training Committee and an explanation as to why the new database had not come into play this year as expected due to changes to the FAI server during the year. This was all now resolved and the database is now available. A short break for more small meetings, and then back to the main room for an open meeting of the Artistic Events Subcommittee. Two areas of general discussion were Vertical Relative Work - a new discipline? where does it fit. This will continue to be discussed within committees and a proposal ultimately put to the Plenary. Wind Tunnel competitions were also another large item that will take up a lot of discussion time before the final presentation to the Plenary. After yet more committee meetings, the delegates eventually made it to dinner, with even more meetings scheduled for later in the evening. In all, a normal first day for at an IPC Annual Meeting.