Letter from the president of the Central American and Caribbean Region of the IBS

Port of Spain, July 22, 2009

Dear colleagues,

I am very sorry that the first time I have missed a meeting of RCAC coincides with my being the President of the Region. I believe that perhaps only Laura Pla has now been to all the meetings of RCAC and the predecessor network which started in Port of Spain in 1992. I seem to be busier than ever these days and found myself having to go to three society conferences in July. I hold office posts for all these societies, but my annual budget just could not get me to all three meetings. Unfortunately Mexico was the furthest distance and therefore the most costly and sadly I had to decide to not attend.

At our last meeting in Margarita, I agreed to try to write the history of RCAC and this I did with a lot of help from Laura Pla, Raúl Macchiavelli, Jhonny Demey, Luís Fernando Grajales, and others. This now exists in both English and Spanish versions. I urge the meeting to officially recognise this as the history and take steps to post on the internet and also perhaps to print some copies. It will be very important to keep this history up to date; for example the 2009 meeting in Vera Cruz should be added to the meeting list.

Recently we had elections for officers for 2010 and 2011 and Jhonny Demey was the only nomination for President. I wish to congratulate Jhonny as he has been with us since 1992 and I am sure the region will be very strong under his guidance.

The election and nomination process did give us a few challenges and Laura suggested that we need to look at our by-laws in this respect. I have looked at the current laws and they may need some minor modifications. I have suggested what these changes should be and urge the meeting to ask the secretary/treasurer to set up the mechanism for the membership to vote on these suggested revisions (Clause 22). For the vote to be valid at least 50% of members must respond and that may be a challenge. I ask the members at the meeting to commit to voting and also to ensure that other members vote as well.

Two new members have recently joined from Jamaica, Novie Younger and Marsha Ivey. Novie is planning to be with you in Vera Cruz, but unfortunately Marsha did not make it, although she tried hard to complement the partial funding that RCAC was able to offer her. Novie and Marsha have agreed to help in the hosting of the next scheduled RCAC meeting in 2011, in Jamaica. I hope that you will agree that we meet in Jamaica in 2011 as that will be a new country for us and there are a few students in that country studying statistics who would benefit from exposure to a meeting like ours.

Once again I am very sorry that I am not in Vera Cruz with you, but I wish you a very successful conference. Please also say hello to our Ibero-American friends who are not part of RCAC, especially those from Spain and Argentina who have given us such support for very many years. Also I would like to thank all those who have given me a lot of support during my term as President, particularly (but not only) Raúl, Laura, Jhonny and I must not forget Donald Simeon here in Trinidad who was the person who put me in touch with Novie and is helping plan for Jamaica.

Bruce Lauckner