From the Information Officer: Evolving a League (Edward Bertram)

In this edition of Epigraph there are multiple examples of how the League continues to evolve to incorporate the changes that are taking place. President Wolf describes the true explosion of educational events as well as regional and cross-regional collaborations that took place in the last year. Secretary-General Moshé presents proposed changes to the League’s constitution that would ensure truly broad international representation on the League’s Executive Committee. Anne Berg, Chair of the Commission on Classification and Terminology, describes the ongoing efforts to classify seizure types and syndromes properly, and Torbjörn Tomson, Chair of the International European Registry of Antiepileptic Drugs and Pregnancy, details the growth and challenges faced by the very important pregnancy and epilepsy registries. The invitation from Shichuo Li and Shih-Hui Lim to participate in the upcoming Asian & Oceanian Epilepsy Congress in Xiamen indicates how much the regional meetings have grown in size and quality over the years so that they are now attracting truly international participants. All of these are signs of a healthy and growing organization.

There is one other direction in which the League must evolve: better communication with its individual members. In its early days the League directed information to the chapters, as keeping up with all of the individuals in all of the member countries was well beyond the capacity of a (at the time) small organization in the pre-computer era. Today we estimate that the League consists of 14,000 individuals (but the estimate is partly conjecture). The problem is that we don’t know who most of you are. To ensure that all members are aware of the many activities and opportunities that exist within the League and its regions, it is essential that we can contact each of you. For this reason the League wants to know who and where you are for the simple reason of getting information and announcements to you as quickly and directly as possible. The success of any organization depends on its members, and, to help the organization improve, the members have to know what the League is doing and where opportunities exist to participate more fully. In the coming several years we will be making a major effort to create as accurate and complete a membership list as possible. Please help the League by providing us with the contact information when we come asking.

Edward H. Bertram
Information Officer