On 14-15 March the ICA Executive Board met in the Blois headquarters of the archives of Saint-Gobain, in order to review the organization’s progress since the successful Brisbane Congress in August 2012 and to plan the way forward up to the Annual Conference in Brussels and beyond.
It is the first time in the organization’s history that the Executive Board has met in a business archive, and it is thanks to Didier Bondue, the Director of Saint-Gobain archives and ICA Vice-President for Marketing and Promotion, that ICA benefited from this unique opportunity. EB members were formally welcomed by Marie de Laubier, the new Director of General Relations of Saint-Gobain, before tackling their very full agenda. Over the course of two days, the Board endorsed proposals for the modernization of the Secretariat, developed the organization’s business plan, approved internal regulations, reviewed the situation of the regional branches, agreed to a more strategic approach for the professional programme, and drew lessons from the Brisbane Congress which will be applied in Seoul in 2016. On Thursday evening, after a chance to view some of the treasures in the Saint-Gobain archives, EB members were treated to a quite unforgettable tour of the château and a medieval banquet. However, this was a comparatively brief interlude in the middle of sustained hard work. Members left Blois on Friday afternoon with a quiet sense of satisfaction that the rapid pace of change in ICA has been maintained.