What happened?

As of the 19th September 2018, the R Epidemics Consortium (RECON) has adopted a non-governmental organisation (NGO) structure. We are now a not-for-profit, incorporated association declared in France. You can find our statutes online here, and the publication in the official journal (“Journal Officiel”) there.

Why?

After 2 years of existence, we felt the need to give a formal structure to what was largely an informal network of people interested in developing open resources for outbreak response. Of the two possible courses of action (association vs company), only the non-profit association suited our vision.

There are several advantages to becoming an NGO:

  • we have a clearly defined membership, and a democratic structure for governance, formed by an executive board, and a General Assembly of voting members; we will gather once a year with all our members to decide what new directions RECON will take, elect new members of the board, etc.

  • the ability to handle our own finances, receive donations, and issue contracts

  • we also used this occasion to broaden our remit, which now includes not only analytics for disease outbreak response, but also in the context of health emergencies and humanitarian crises

What changed?

The transition to RECON-NGO, and our new membership guidelines, have led to redefining our membership. RECON now includes subscribers, who have access to our mailing list and our slack organisation for instant messaging, and contributing members, who actively help developing packages, training material, responding to health emergencies, or organising events. Note that by default, former members have all become subscribers, and still benefit from previous advantages. Only members are now listed on the website, as the number of subscribers keeps increasing.

We have also acquired an executive board, formed by, in alphabetic order:

  • Amrish Baidjoe: Vice-president, Coordinator ‘Training and capacity building
  • Anne Cori: Coordinator ‘methodology’
  • Rosalind Eggo: Deputy Treasurer
  • Thibaut Jombart: President, Treasurer
  • Zhian Kamvar: Secretary, Coordinator ‘Software development’
  • Patrick Keating: Deputy Secretary, Coordinator ‘Field deployment’
  • Lulla Opatowski: Deputy secretary
  • Claire Thomson: Deputy Treasurer