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

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Jaarboeken Stichting Archiefpublicaties | 2010 | | pagina 107