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From the President
This is my last message for our ISNR Newsletter as we look ahead into a new year for ISNR. Needless to say, this year we were confronted with a lot of challenges and we also created a number of changes. I will use this letter to provide a summary of the year and some of the things hopefully yet to come. To begin, and what should have been most obvious, we updated the ISNR website. This improvement included our new logo, new name, and we believe improved presentation, ease of use, and information relevant for searches. Our initiatives to make this website not only a key information site for professionals, but also a top SEO (search engine optimized) website for neurofeedback, neurotherapy, and neuroregulation have been successful. As noted, we also changed our name to the International Society of Neuroregulation and Research to bring us in line with the fact that we include methods of neurostimulation and other methods of clinical neuroscience to improve neuroregulation and not just neurofeedback. This also brings us in line with the name of our journal.
We revamped the bylaws, resulting in a change of the board structure and operations. We reduced the obligations of the presidency from four years to three. We removed the need for sergeant-at-arms. We built in our professional CPA firm to be present at each board meeting to verify and maintain consistency of financial reporting and monitoring. With the changes in the bylaws, we are now able to streamline the voting procedures to expedite actions as needed. We updated our list of standing committees to include: (1) Ethics Committee; (2) Vetting Committee; (3) Committee on Practice Standards; (4) Conference Committee (Program Committee); (4) Education Committee; (5) Finance Committee; and finally (6) Executive Committee. We have continued to support our APA CPT code task force and we believe the road to finally achieve new approved CPT codes for neurofeedback will be realized soon. We created two new boards of advisors: (1) Board of Advisors to include selected personnel to offer advice including past board of directors members and (2) a board of international advisors to include presidents or designated reps from many of the organizations around the world with common interests. Each of the advisory boards will have one voting member on the board of directors. The major challenge for us was the late and fast pivot to provide a quality first ever virtual conference this year, prompted by the pandemic. We were proud to announce that despite this challenge, we received a resounding approval response from the members that attended and that many of our sponsors and vendors also reported good results. Additionally, we were able to cut the overall budget for running the conference by nearly one third and we were able to clearly come out in the black this year after all expenses were paid for the conference. Also importantly, as was one of our goals, we were able to increase our membership by nearly 20% and this was also included as part of the incentives for attending the conference.
Our next newsletter and other messages will come from our new president, Leslie Sherlin. As you may know, Leslie comes into this position as one of the most experienced members of the board and is certainly no stranger to the role of president of the society. I am greatly indebted to Leslie and our past president, Roger deBeus, who were very helpful to guide and support me in my role this year given their previous experience as past presidents. I am also greatly indebted to this year’s active oard of directors and to our executive administrator, Susan Alvarez, and our various committee members, who often worked extra hours and were amazingly responsive to our needs. As we head into the new year, we look forward to embracing our more local regional groups in the US as we continue to build and solidify our relationships with the international groups. We have ongoing work to increase our presence in social media and to take a strong hand to make sure the public has a better understanding of what we do and what to look for in quality professional services and methods offered by those associated with ISNR. Finally, thank you to all of you that supported my presidency and all that you do to expand the research to improve our methods and provide the excellent services you do to meet the needs of so many around the world.
David S Cantor, PhD, MS, FNAN, QEEG-D, IBQE-D, BCN
ISNR President, 2020 |
