From Geoffrey Lewis, Australian Commissioner

The philatelic exhibiting world is divided into three continental groups: Asia, Europe and the Americas.  Each continental federation holds exhibitions open to exhibitors belonging to each of its member nations.  Australia participates in every Asian international exhibition held under the auspices of the governing body FIAP.

A European international exhibition ITALIA 2009 was held in Rome on 21-25 October 2009.  As well as inviting all members of the European federation (FEPA), the hosts also invited participation from five other countries with large Italian migrant populations: Argentina, Australia, Canada, South Africa and USA.  This is the first time that Australia and Australians have been able to participate in a FEPA exhibition.

The exhibition venue was the Palazzo dei Congressi (the literal English translation is the Palace of the Conferences) in EUR, a business district on the outskirts of Rome.  This district had very wide straight streets (probably the only ones in Italy), and sidewalks with wide covered colonnades.   It reminded me of the Civic precinct of Canberra, and I later found out that EUR was built by Mussolini in the 1930s so that must have been the contemporary architectural style for planned capital cities.

The exhibits were arranged in frames in the spacious hallways of the Palazzo, on several floors.  Lighting was generally very good, however there were a few blind spots.

Only 12 sheets could be accommodated in each frame, which meant the exhibitors from Australia and most other countries had to do some reorganisation of their exhibits to fit.  The exception was the one-frame class, where 16-sheet frames were used.

As well as being Commissioner for Australia, I was also on the Jury, judging in the Postal History class.  >English was the language of communication for Jury and Commissioners.  Approximately half the exhibits were annotated using English, with the remainder being written up in Italian, German, French or Spanish.

Harmonisation

This was my first experience as a judge of the concept which is called Harmonisation.  I was very impressed with this, both in concept and in practice.  For Traditional, Postal History and Thematics there were three or four teams in each class.  The first round of judging was done as usual in teams of three.  Then all the judges in these classes were re-assigned.  All the Team Leaders were in one group.  The other judges were split into two separate groups.  Each of the three groups reviewed all (or many) of the exhibits in the class.  Usually the person who originally judged the exhibit explained the reason for the assessment.  The time for review was typically much less than the time for the original judging.  No great anomaly in the original judging was found, but there were a few adjustments of either points or medals.

The obvious advantage is that it is likely to lead to a fairer outcome for exhibitors, and reduce the chances of gross errors.  Another advantage is that each juror got a chance to work closely with many more jurors.

This process should be used at international exhibitions when there are several teams in the same class.

For Australian national exhibitions, the problem is that the judges are often working on different teams.  Typically the judging is broken up into two “shifts”.  However with a bit of lateral thinking, I am sure we can implement the concept of harmonisation.

The process for critiques at the frames was very good.  They completely dispensed with a cumbersome meeting introducing everybody.  Exhibitors and Judges were told to go to a meeting point for each class.  Each exhibitor was given an appointment time, allowing for 10 to 15 minutes per exhibit.  At the critique all members of the jury team were present with the exhibitor.

ITALIA 2009 used computer technology extensively.  All information from the commissioners was transferred using internet to the exhibition’s database.  This included exhibitors’ applications, title pages, catalogue description, and also an image of a “best item”.  This scheme enabled the judges to download the title pages of the exhibits they were judging.  It also facilitated the production of an excellent catalogue - each exhibit had the owner’s description plus a picture of an important item.

Australian results

The results of Australian exhibitors are shown in the table.  I would like to thank all exhibitors for participating, and for co-operating very well with me.  The depth of standard of this exhibition was as strong as an FIP exhibition.  

Special Note:  multi-frame exhibits are 12-sheet frames.  A 7-frame exhibit is equivalent to our 5-frame exhibit, and a 10-frame exhibit is equivalent to our 8-frame exhibit.  One-frame exhibits are shown in a 16-sheet frame.