Warsaw, a day before the first and unique meeting of the scientific committee for
the conference, Joan and I prepared a draft programme whose opening and first
sessions were entirely focused on competencies. After a one day discussion, the
topic and general structure of the programme were adopted, with the following
logic: assuming that professional mobility in Europe was the ultimate issue to
achieve, then we had to discuss its preconditions (a shared professional profile),
and the means to promote it (education, certification).
Preparing this article, I read again the documents related to the organization of
the conference, comprising all the exchanges I had with Hans at that moment
about the programme, thinking that future searchers writing the history of the
European conference on archives would find them delightful. Though he was not
a member of the scientific committee of the conference, he played a major role,
but was disappointed because he did not completely manage to have the ideal
programme. He did not agree for instance about the content of the session about
competencies: why was the point in having a parallel session about the impact of
national regulations on competencies? Why a parallel session about archives as
a scientific discipline? Would it not be better to have instead a session about the
shift from the "professional in the industrial society" to the "professional in the
information society"? Anyway, he kindly accepted to be the keynote speaker in
the opening session, and he was the one who closed the conference as well.
And he was brilliant, in his personal manner. That 18th of May 2006, opening
the conference, he opened new perspectives, and inspired people able to be
inspired by this topic. I will not develop at length what he said, which will be
presented as the introduction of the handbook our working group has prepared.
He also moved the final resolution5 adopted by the participants to the conference
whose relevant extract follows:
"The participants of the conference encourage the European branch of the ICA
(EURBICA), and the section for professional associations of ICA (SPA) to carry
out a feasibility study for a project to develop a European competency framework
for the archival profession".
The resolution was the real starting point for the project, and the conference, the
ideal place to network for setting up a working group.
The best moment was undoubtedly the closing dinner and the following
ball, where the participants could discover for most of them a different Hans
promoting a new aspect of the European archivist's profile: he could dance and
shake his body in a very personal style. I was honoured to be his partner to open
the "dancing session" and felt that if I wanted to have Hans in the working
group, I had to include dancing as an important component of the working
group environment. This feeling was confirmed in Curacao, where the 2006
International Conference of the Round Table on Archives (CITRA) was held some
months later, where multiple opportunities to dance were offered to us. Writing
these lines, I have in front of me a picture of a smiling Hans drinking to life and
friendship...
We had already the conviction that it would be very difficult, and probably
impossible, to develop a single model for Europe, taking into account the
CHRISTINE MARTINEZ WHEN CHRISTINE MEETS HANS OR AM I A COMPETENT ARCHIVIST?
5 Full text available on www.archiwa.gov.pl, "events"
105