The Voice of AIPC West With the Night

AIPC CEO Sven Bossu reflects on how associations need to invent new ways for developing standards and practices which allow their members communities to grow.

When I was offered the opportunity to take over the helm of AIPC early this year, I had some very clear ideas on where I wanted to take the association. And I still do – the ideas are simply quite different. It is something I share with many of my colleagues in the ecosystem associations: the world we knew came to a halt and we need to invent a new one. And we must remember our purpose when doing so.

During the AIPC Annual Conference in September, I more than once thought about Beryl Markham – who wrote the book “West with the Night”. She was unconventional, passionate and courageous. She grew up in Kenia, spoke Swahili and went hunting with the local tribes. Later she became a famous trainer of race horses, before turning herself into one of the first bush pilots. And she was of course the first person to fly solo, nonstop across the Atlantic from Britain to North America in 1936, where she landed after 21 hours – with a broken engine. This is one of her most famous quotes: “I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can.”

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