Remembering Madam Zuzanna Podgórna
With great sadness we open this Newsletter with the announcement that Madam Zuzanna Podgórna, honorary President of our Polish Member SITN, passed away at the age of 73.
She was active in the structures of SITN since the foundation of the Association, being one of its founders in 1989.
During her career, she became a member of the Board, Secretary and finally President. She held this function from 2010 to 2018. During her office term, SITN hosted in Kraków, the ISIA GA in 2012.
In 2022 she became Honorary President of SITN. Since last year, unfortunately, she had to fight against an illness that unfortunately led to her sudden passing.
During her service, SITN undertook important steps ahead for the development of the Association.
The ISIA Community will always remember her as an elegant lady, with a bright and reassuring smile that was always communicating friendship and serenity to those that had the chance to meet her.
The Board and the entire ISIA community support the family of Madame Podgórna and SITN during their time of grief.
ISIA Technical event 2025
The event is for the experts of the ISIA Members and it is aiming to discuss in deeper the ISIA Quality Standard, in particular:
- quality standards in exams;
- review of the Safety Test;
- ISIA Technical Test – report of the expert group;
- workbook and documents of the TC.
The information to register has been already sent to all the Members. If you did not register yet, please refer to the following link: https://forms.gle/icEw2es4bypnNxmQA
See the attached PDF for further information. For questions, please refer to the Vicepresident Europe V. Kiedaisch.
ISIA Assembly of the Delegates 2025 –7th of April, Vail, USA
As already announced some months ago, the next Assembly of the Delegates will take place in Vail, the 7th of April, one day before the Interski General Assembly.
The meeting will take place in the US to comply with the request of the majority of the ISIA and Interski Members, to coordinate the international activities hosting the annual assemblies at the same time.
IAESS, INTERSKI and ISIA already committed to such a request and are hosting their assemblies at the same period and in the same place.
Representing the interests of the ISIA Members, the Presidium has prepared motions that are planned to be discussed for the Interski GA. It is the will of the Board to make sure that the concerns of the Members are properly addressed and shared by the entire community during the institutional assemblies.
The ISIA Board was requested to allow distant attendance for those that, due to travel costs, are not planning to be in Vail.
The Board is looking into the possibility of streaming the meeting, so that everybody can at least follow the discussion. Distant voting and right of speech will not be possible for those attending on line.
We want to remind here that the voting rights are according to the number of UpToDate Snowsports Instructors in the Database and fully paid fees.
ISIA America Regional Forum 2025
The ISIA American Forum 2025 will take place in Aspen, from the 9th till the 12th of April.
This is the first time that an ISIA Regional Forum takes place in America, and it as an important step to strengthen the ISIA presence worldwide.
Please refer to the attached PDF for more info on the program.
Please note, the registration deadline is the 9th of March, follow this link to insert your data:
ISIA Regional Forum – April 2025 – Aspen
Rooms registration has to be done here:
limelighthotels.com/aspen/reservations#/booking/step-1?data=(‘hGhd!’limelight-aspen-new’~aeD06BdtD15Bfs.~rGat!2~cn!0~cg.~alEpoAcoAgp!’3379948’~rn.)FryArkAre.~rr*)Fax!0~cyAds!(‘peAlsAasAst*)~myEseAceAne*)*!null.C%5DA*~B%2F2025’~C!%5BD!’04%2FE!false~F%5D~GsC(‘%01GFEDCBA.*_
For questions, please refer to the Vicepresident America M. Bacer and his organising team (details in the attached pdf).
UN Nations project: save the date 10th of March
We remind you that the next 10th of March, there will be an online seminar on the topic:
Tackling Plastic Waste in Mountainous Regions: Initiatives Under the Basel, Rotterdam, and Stockholm Conventions.
The meeting is taking place on line from 4.00pm till 5.00pm CET.
Presenters will be Frank Moser from the BRS Convention, Mernoosh Azodi from the BRS Convention and Daire O’Connell from IASI. The initiative is taking place within the working group established between BRS; IAESS, Interski, ISIA as a follow up of the keynote lecture presented in Levi by ISIA.
Follow this link to register and attend:
https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_7A6QhI_eR16v3OJ-cbtAtQ#/registration
Qualification Framework survey follow-up
We kindly remind, if you have not done it yet, to fill in the questionnaire at the following link: https://forms.gle/8z4FFAL3NbUBfYR68
This is about the concept of a Qualification Framework that was presented in Livigno at the DA 2024, in the context of a discussion on the development of the ISIA Quality Standard. The representatives of the ISIA Members who were unable to attend the DA still have a chance to submit their answers.
The aim is to present, during the April DA in Vail, CO, a complete mapping of the national qualifications frameworks among all the 39 ISIA Member Nations.
ISIA Ski School Standard
Upon the impulse of our Member ZUTS from Slovenia, ISIA will present in Vail the concept of a standard to assign quality label to Ski Schools, according to specific criteria aiming to incentive the schools to hire ISIA qualified instructors. The request of such a standard came from the Members a few years ago from the ISIA Survey 2019, that was presented at the ISIA AD in Pamporovo. Out of 31 Member nations entering their input, 24 were requesting a quality label from ISIA for the ski schools established in a country. The standard is now ready to be discussed and possibly accepted by the Assembly.
Work of the Technical Commission
The Technical event 2025 in Sexten has been designed to help the TC candidate experts to get acquainted with the current procedures for inspections and advisory activities that are performed during the season.
The event will also be a chance for the current and the candidate experts to discuss the future activities and the areas that need to be updated.
The TC controls have been regularly running over the season. Three controls were performed at the start of the season in Europe. One inspection has been planned in the area Asia Pacific for the incoming season. Three other on field inspections are planned in Europe before the end of this season. One inspection is planned in the southern hemisphere, during the next southern winter season. Further inspections on the ISIA DB are now going on for a few countries.
Please note that only 6 members replied to the request of notifying the dates of their highest qualification courses and of the technical tests. The TC will solicit again the Members and we wish we had a better response for the future.
Data maintenance of the ISIA DB
The ISIA DB development is an ongoing work. Our provider has recently delivered some new features, that are going to improve the performances of such an important tool for ISIA and their Members. Here some of the news.
- Enhanced functionalities related to GDPR and privacy issues.
The instructors are now able to decide if they want to disclose partially or totally their sensitive data: an instructor can now decide to have his profile visible, and still hide one or all of his contact details. - API tool for developers of the national DBs
As announced in one of the former Newsletters, the system can now generate APIs that will allow the Member Administrators to build up direct communication interfaces between their National DB and the ISIA DB. This is an important step, simplifying the updating procedures. We invite the interested Member Nations to request the office their will to start testing the system. - ISIA Digital Card tools
The DB has been improved in order to allow delivering to qualified instructor uptodate Digital ISIA Cards in real time according to the data in the DB.
Please note, a new spreadsheet to upload the data is now available, and we kindly ask you to download it and use that when updating the DB (please note, no need to use the spreadsheet for those Members that will use the APIs mentioned above). The new spreadsheet now contains additional info, such as the National Instructor Code, the telephone number and the email address of the instructor. While the first one is optional and it is especially useful to issue National Cards from the ISIA DB, the contact details are vital to allow the Digital Card provider to validate the card requests from the instructors.
Following developments above, the Card provider is now testing the delivery of the ISIA Digital Cards. We will give you more news as soon as the test phase is over.
Seminar on the ISIA DB
The Office and the Board understand that there is need for a direct support to Members in order to use at best the potential offered by the ISIA DB. Therefore, we are aiming to organise a seminar to address all the questions and doubts that the National Administrators might still have on the use of the DB.
The exact dates will be communicated later.
ISIA Pins and Badges order
The Office is glad to communicate that the metal pins and the soft badges are now in stock, and it is ready to receive the orders from the members.
Please note, the uptodate prices for the items (post costs not included) are the following:
- Metal pin big size ≈37x29mm 6.- Eur each
- Metal pin small size ≈25x20mm 5.- Eur each
- Soft badge unique size ≈80×63 4.- Chf each
We highlight once again that the ISIA Office cannot deal with individual requests, all the orders must go through the National Associations.
We kindly ask you to notify the office if you need such items and how many.
Please do not hesitate to contact us in case you need any further information, on the topics above or other subjects.
We are looking forward to seeing you all at the next events, in Sexten, Vail and Aspen.
Thank you and best regards.
Dr. Vittorio Caffi Dr. Valentin Kiedaisch
President Vicepresident Europe