I was in Barcelona on April 9 -12 for IWF Cornerstone Conference.
Before the opening of the conference, there was another meeting held, which was IWF Presidents’ Council Meeting. After the opening speeches the topics included a new video made by IWF Global in order to present the value proposition of IWF. It will be sent around by the Global President Deborah Trudeau. I believe it is good news and it will need to be translated into Turkish. IWF Turkey’s Founding President Funda Sivrikaya appears in the video with a great look. If IWF Turkey’s past term President Aytül Erçil was also there, I couldn’t frankly catch while watching. It gives us one more great reason to watch.
The second topic was the Forum to Forum Connections, and it is a must for attracting new members and especially young members.
We may establish forum to forum connections as IWF Turkey. There were few proposals and we will work on to see which one can be more feasible and fruitful.
The topic during the afternoon was “finding our place and finding our voice in the gender agenda”. In this crossroad IWF Global is trying to find out what their place in the gender agenda should be. This means more women advocacy and have more voice in the country agendas and not define the mission on encouraging women on leadership, but also launching more programs to encourage all women on many of the gender issues. I fully agree to this diversion from the earlier IWF Global agenda which was focused on sisterhood. Now, it is going towards for creating an impact, all together.
IWF Global has asked Accenture to review her status to be a sustainable NGO and they don’t want to miss the opportunity to be placed well in the changing world. We, in IWF Turkey, are lucky to have Accenture and Dilnişin Bayel on our Board.
My understanding is that sisterhood or dining and networking is not expected to be dropped from the agenda but leading the change shall be seriously valued.
President Trudeau mentioned that IWF was formed by the women who were entering the executive ranks in many corporations during 1974, in New York.
She also mentioned that “I” in IWF means three things together. One is being “international” and bringing the women around the world together, second is being “influencers” who are brave, resilient, kind and generous people as well as the third dimension to be “impact” creators.
The first session was called Form and Function; Built the Environment of the Future and it was on architecture. The message was the in the future the housing industry will change drastically so that the way we build our buildings will change and may be the way we live will also change.
The second session was called Creative Cauldron; it was on cinema industry and there are new producers and directors are coming up with awards are women now. The message was women do sponsor women. Encouragement from women to women ought to be there, still men’s support and encouragement are also equally important. Women have real stories and real scenes in their films, no matter that the film is about, even if it is called “Aliens”. The women producers make 26% of the producers right now.
Third session was called Sport Shero and it was on football. Secretary General of FIFA, Fatma Samoura, was the speaker and it was about restructuring of FIFA. Transparency, ethical behaviour, no discrimination and ethics are the new policies in football, and it appears that they will endure as the policies.
The first session of the second day was about the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Who shall gain in this revolution? It is not yet very clear. The customers will have a better comfort zone and better alternatives. The communication and availability of information will no doubt be abundant. The 5G infrastructure will be widely used in the countries that are interested in development and growth.
The second session was called Fashion Forward. Both the customer and the manufacturers are not happy with the ex
tra goods they have on hand. The manufacturers have to produce a series of sizes. In most of the models they have some of the sizes that are not sold. This produces waste. The consumers consumption pattern shall change. One solution proposal was rental. Another solution was going back to tailor made days and that you order on line including face time chats and texting and the customer shall receives the goods within 5 days. Still, the majority of the buying behavior doesn’t seem to be online shopping, as yet.
The Future of the Union was discussed in the third session. With Brexit, UK will lose, EU shall also be loosing, but comparably in lesser proportion. The answer to “who will benefit?” needs to be found, and the answer seems to be China.