Dear ISA members and other sauna lovers
ISA News
The New Year has started quite actively for ISA. We had a general Meeting in last October where we accepted e.g. the new bylaws. This was giving ISA an option to increase the amount of Board members totally up to 12.
ISA Board invited the extraordinary meeting of members to be held via Zoom 19.01.2023. 13 national members were present. The meeting decided to increase the amount of Board members to 12.
In the election process Don Genders from USA, Katie Bracher from UK and Hans Hägglund from Sweden were elected to the Board with the term to the end of 2024.
The other members are those elected in the General Meeting 01.01.2022. They are Peter Jeitler, Vice-President, Austria, Carsten Sonnenberg, Germany, Lasse Eriksen, Norway, Mika Meskanen, Finland, Piotr Koper, Poland, Kim Pedersen, Denmark, Rolf Pieper, Germany, Kenseki Kim, Japan and Risto Elomaa as the President.
We would like here to thank Jussi Niemelä who left the seat of the Finnish Sauna Society to Mika Meskanen. We are sure we meet Jussi Still in many saunas related occasions and in saunas.
The Board has been inviting Kari Laukkarinen, France, to act as the secretary.
Besides it´s normal work specified in the bylaws ISA has three special projects going. They are communication, research and Sauna aid.
Communication
ISA WEB PAGE
The web page of ISA is requiring more resources than are available to be able to meet all the needs quickly enough. The page www.saunainternational.net is still going to be there but updated with a little longer lead time. There You find also in the future the updated list of members as well as all the official material of the Meetings etc.
SOCIAL MEDIA
The GM in October and then the ISA Board decided to expand its communication efforts on social media, with a focus in LinkedIn. After the trial period, it was determined that LinkedIn offers the most flexible, measurable and relevant platform for ISA´s communication needs. As a result, ISA has almost 200 followers and plans to boost its communication efforts on the platform.
LinkedIn allows ISA to easily post news, Event and articles related to sauna, as well as share photos and videos etc. However the most important aspect of LinkedIn for Isa is the ability for Members to share their impressions, opinions, and comment on posts. To further increase the engagement and reach, ISA is now offering ISA Members the opportunity to publish relevant sauna-related content on the Isa LinkedIn page.
Relevant suana-realted content refers to information or material that is in line with ISA bylaws and of interest to the ISA community.
To do this, members can send their content or links by e-mail to ISA`s Chief Communication Officer, Kim Pedersen (info@saunainternationel.net) or
directly through LinkedIn.
The link to ISA´s LinkedIn page is https://www.linkedin.com/company/saunainternational
If the members do need help or training, Kim is more than happy to assist You.
Your comments, posts and sharing the Sauna news through this page are of great importance to increase ISA´s visibility. When we all start using LinkedIn ISA site actively it also creates value, visibility and new contact networks to our current Members.
By increasing the visibility of ISA we will get new ISA Members and supporters.
Besides these the secretary Kari Laukkarinen has been creating for the Board members What´s up group where it is possible to reach all the Board members quickly.
XVIII International Sauna Congress
The material should Finally be available during March 2023. There have been problems in copyrights etc. but according to Sauna Bund everything should be solved soon.
People seem to be interested to get the material. One problem during the congress was the lack of translations into English because the speakers sent their material quite late after the deadlines and there was no time to do the translations.
Especially the material related to the energy saving etc. is interesting and we do wait that. We hope that ISA research group can participate in some of these projects in the future.
Sauna aid
Sauna aid has been delivering two saunas to Ukraine. For the fundraising there was e-g- organized a film show in London where the documents Perfect Sweat were shown first time in Europe.
The Event was also doing fund raising for Sauna aid. We get a report from BSS later about the vent.
Sauna research
We would like to continue the work started with Brenke´s report as well as presentations in congress.
We hope that the new Board member Mr. Sauna Doctor Hans Hägglund is going to Support our forces there.
The task group should have meeting quite soon and there also Lasse Erikssen can explain what he has been achieving.
We do Naturally report about that as soon as we have something written available.
Sauna events etc.
Interesting film from Estonia, Smoke Sauna Sisterhood
And Estonia is having year 2023 as a sauna year with many events and sauna options. Please go to the web page https://www.sauna2023.ee/en
In February North American Sauna Society (NASS) is involved in the Sauna week in USA. We hope that we can also show there the first Perfect Sweta document about Finland. Eero from NASS is giving more information about the program of the week later or You can go to the NASS website.
Finally we would like to welcome all the new members as well as new Board members to work together for the sauna.
Januar 23th 2023
Warmest regards,
Risto Elomaa, President – ISA