Dear Colleagues,

It is my pleasure to announce that the ISAC Council has approved a new five-year strategic plan, which members can access after logging into the website. The new plan builds upon previous successes and will help to guide the Society’s decisions and growth over the next five years.

The 2012-2016 strategic planning process involved a nine month activity that started with a close review of the previous plan. Councilors and volunteers completed a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats analysis. Based upon this SWOT analysis, Councilors and volunteers updated previous areas and created new goals with linked actions. We closed down activities that had served their purpose. ISAC has been able to achieve and maintain a healthy financial position and the leadership has emphasized the need to be creative and to seek to add value to membership.

The pillars of the new plan remain Education, Membership, Collaboration, Journal, Standards and Organizational management. These pillars support the Society’s mission to lead the way in the advancement of cytometry, transfer of new methodologies, and the exchange of cutting-edge scientific and technical information in the quantitative cell sciences. A key component that relates to every pillar of the plan is communications. 

We must constantly improve our communications with members and other stakeholders - in particular with that wider world of cytometry represented by our Associated Societies. Indeed, you may have noticed an uptick in our communications following CYTO 2011. In addition the development and launch of our new website was fast-tracked.

We look forward to implementing the plan and you will have bi-annual updates on our progress. With a combination of ISAC and generous external funding we have established significant activities in education, certification and the data repository. The costs of our other activities will always be subjected to downward pressure in these difficult times.

ISAC continues to be aware of the problems faced by our industrial colleagues and supporters. Accordingly, our plan is aimed at increasing the attractiveness of our Society and its CYTO events to a wider scientific audience.

I want to thank the multitude of volunteers who contributed to the success of our previous strategic plan and I am confident that our proud history of volunteerism will continue. Directed by our new strategic plan we see a robust future for our Society.

Sincerely,

Paul J. Smith
ISAC President