Both the FIG Working Week in Eilat, Israel, and the Regional Conference in Hanoi, Vietnam, may be considered in many aspects to have been a great success. The meeting in Israel took place in May 2009. The meeting in Hanoi, held in October 2009, once again demonstrated the conceptual soundness of the regional conference. It would also seem that the current concept of biennial regional conferences maintains a particularly good balance between our resources and the requests from member associations in regions hosting them. In Hanoi, FAO organised a two-day Regional Consultation Meeting that also attracted professionals who do not normally attend FIG events. A similar concept with UN-Habitat proved similarly practicable during the Working Week in Stockholm in 2008. This was seminar on land Administration and Property Rights.

Publications Record
As the current Council term of office nears its end, many projects are naturally being finalised for presentation at the Congress in Sydney. This will result in several publications. I am very proud to announce that this year will see the launch of more new FIG publications than ever before in its history; the total will exceed ten, and several of these will be available in time for Sydney.

UN-linked Reports
I would like also to mention here two reports, both the outcome of our conferences and closely linked to our co-operation with the United Nations. The first is Land Governance in Support of the Millennium Development Goals, a report from the FIG/World Bank Conference that was held in Washington DC in March 2009. This report has been published jointly with the World Bank as a FIG Policy Statement. The second publication is the Hanoi Declaration on Land Acquisition in Emerging Economies: the FIG response to and recommendations regarding issues raised in conjunction with the FIG Regional Conference in Vietnam.

Taskforce Work
I would like further to make special mention of the valuable work that the Task Forces are doing. Of the current four Task Forces, the one addressing Institutional and Organisational Development has finished its work with the launch of its final report. The Task Forces on Spatially Enabled Society and on Africa are still continuing their work. The follow-up on the FIG/World Bank Congress in Washington, as well as our contributions to the UN-Habitat Global Land Tool Network (GLTN), have had key priority in our action plan over the recent months.

See you in Sydney!