Inaugural message your President:
Dear Colleagues and Friends
It is a privilege and an honor for me to serve as the new President of the EAONO in the coming years and I will do my very best to meet your expectations.
The main goal of EAONO is the permanent education of younger colleagues in order to reach the best specialized otologists and neurotologists to the benefit of our patients. Our bi-annual instruction courses based on clinical and basic science, are one of the key ways to achieve this goal. An excellent example of this was the last EAONO conference week, originally planned for September 2020 in London. Due to the COVID pandemic, this meeting was deferred and in March 2021 it was decided to move it to September 2021. Anyone who has ever organized a conference knows how much time and energy it takes, let alone the conversion of a face to face congress to a completely virtual one (in about six months) with two parallel sessions and very informative and interesting presentations during key-note lectures, instructional courses, panels, posters Q&A’s and sponsored sessions. I believe I speak for the entire EAONO community when I say that the organization of the whole was impeccable, that we embraced what technology could offer and that Prof. Shakeel Saeed and his organizing committee have delivered an extraordinary performance for which we would like to congratulate him. Shak, I would also like to thank you on behalf of EAONO for your leadership in the recent turbulent years.
During the Steering Group Meeting and the General Assembly Meeting following the EAONO week, a lot of issues were discussed. Our Treasurer Thomas Somers stops after having held this position for more than 12 years. We are deeply indebted to Thomas (and his secretary Elyne who helped him over the recent years), also realizing that this housekeeping duty is not always the most glamourous one. Prof. Dan Jiang, who was interim assistant to Thomas the last half year, was elected as the new Treasurer by unanimous vote. Prof. Andrzej Zarowski was elected as the new General Secretary. I congratulate Dan and Andrzej on their new positions and really look forward to closely working with them.
Together we want to further professionalize registration and payments for EAONO memberships, the list of regional secretaries, support the European otologic courses and further strengthen the JIAO. With regard to the latter subject, we can count ourselves fortunate with the commitment of Prof. Nuri Ozgirgin, who has made our magazine increasingly important, to stay on as editor-in-chief. Furthermore our former president suggested to incorporate the 50 hours of edited Keynote Lecturers and Instructional Courses of the EAONO2021 week into the EAONO website in order to have these presentations available to EAONO-members. Prof. Saeed has stated that he is willing to further develop this idea. This is another example showing that the development of our Academy is the result of ever new activities of experienced Otological Predecessors whose experience we continuously learn and who deserve our abiding appreciation.
It is also a great pleasure to formally announce that the next EAONO meeting will be held in 2024 in Nijmegen, the oldest city in the Netherlands. As your new President it is my task to chair the Conference, vice chair will be Prof. Myrthe Hol. The promotional clip has already been shown last EAONO2021 Conference week but will also be placed on www.EAONO2024.org website.
Looking forward to meet you in the near future,
With my best regards,
Jef Mulder
President, EAONO, October 2021