Mission accomplished, first episode
Every time we talked with European waterlily-lovers, we felt there was something missing in our field of work. A bridge between the European and other international waterlily-people, an extension to the IWGS. In 2017 we finally realised that It just takes a few people who want to make a change and one leader to actually do it. All the credits go to the one that made the dream of all us Europeans possible, Nicolas Long. It’s my believe that we still would be talking about it and not really act on it, without his determination. So again, let me thank him and of course all the other founding members.
I know the first talks about starting an association in Europe, were always centred around a bottle of wine, beer, or any other uplifting liquid. But never the less the focus was right on topic, we Europeans can handle our drinks.
When we came home in August, having visited colleagues in Italy and France, we felt like some great things were about to happen. Not long after that, the EWLA was founded. We decided on our main focus, on what we wanted to achieve and of course that it had to be an association for all Europeans.
It’s wonderful to meet people through the internet, but it’s more difficult to discuss and really talk things through and definitely hard to share a drink. So, the idea started to come together and have a proper chat with everyone interested. Gianluca Bonomo proposed Barcelona, which I think was a magnificent choice, especially because I had never been there. Always mix business with pleasure, although in my line of work, it’s impossible not to do so anyway.
Just founded in September, already meeting in December for 2 days, it seems to be a great succes. We had people from France, Italy, Spain, The Netherlands and Belgium of course. Yes, we still lack some countries, but it was definitely a great start and a reminder that the different languages are a challenge but not one that we can’t overcome.
We locked ourselves up in the living room of the appartement for a whole afternoon. So everyone could present themselves. Some did it with great schwung, others were less talkative (myself included). It’s a wonderful thing to see all these different kinds of people, different lives, but the same love for waterlilies. Our group existed of 14 people being: Antonio, Davide & partner, Florian, Gianluca, Luis, Mathieu, Nicolas, Sander & partner, Tomas & partner and of course us. We all have different professions, but are equally qualified. We all gave our view on what we would like to be the main tasks of EWLA, what EWLA could do for us and of course what we could do for EWLA. We all agreed it’s not about commercial benefits but about spreading the passion and love for waterlilies. It’s about giving the correct information, it’s about promoting waterlilies, it’s even more about bringing people together.
And of course, plans were laid out for an EWLA symposium at Kew in 2018 and an IWGS symposium in France in 2019.
Don’t worry, we didn’t stay locked up for two days of course, we also went for a drink, a meal, some sightseeing … but still, even at the table or bar I don’t think that I heard three sentences that weren’t about waterlilies or lotus. And we even had the pleasure to have a little chat with Carlos Magdalena, via Skype.
We finally did it and hope to give you an update on the topics discussed very soon. So please stay tuned for our next episode.
List of Attendees
- Gianluca Bonomo (IT)
- Davy Claes (BE)
- Sander Dekker (NL)
- Luis Doblado Cañete (ES)
- Mathieu Egidio (FR)
- Tomás Escribano (ES)
- Florian Henaux (FR)
- Eric Hooijer (NL)
- Davide La Salvia (IT)
- Nicolas Long (FR)
- Séverine Lyssens-Danneboom (BE)
- Antonio Nania (IT)