I welcome this opportunity to share views about the challenges of running OR societies in Europe. I congratulate the Italian OR Society for its initiative in this discussion. The following are a  few points reflecting our experience as a small society. Even within Costas Pappis's (President of the Hellenic OR Society who wrote in the recent edition of AIRO news) definition that all our societies are small, with the exception of the OK OR society, the Irish society is definitely small! The following are some points which review our situation.

1. We do not any longer hold a national conference. We encourage younger members to use the various EURO instruments, especially the EURO and IFORS conferences. Also we have made a link with the U.K. O.R. Society. They have invited us to participate actively in their next annual conference in Lancaster in September 1998. They generously include us on their mailing lists.
2. We do not send members a lot of paper. We use e-mail. Bi-annually we send information to members by post. This could be described as a newsletter.
3. We hold 12 to 14 weekly seminars each year, in the middle of the academic year and associated with a Master degree in Management Science, of which I am the director. Members come if the topic interests them, including the possibility of developing commercial contacts. There are always the students there and some faculty. So the discussion is interesting and the group always different. In terms of my work and that of those who also are involved the key word is synergy. We market our seminars to multiple communities: students, faculty, OR society, business contacts, OR consultants. Relevant news is distributed in the same way. People without e-mail do not get much service!
4. We see ourselves as a network of networks. The O.R. community is not as well defined as it used to be. "O.R. people" would not see themselves always as "O.R. people". We try to maintain links into former O.R. people who are now working in Information Systems, Consulting, I.T., etc.
5. Our identity is based on an approach to problem solving. This has led to a broadening of our remit. We have recently changed our name from the Operations Research and Management Science Society of Ireland to the Management Science Society of Ireland. We have included systems research as one of our aims.
6. We do not publish a national journal. We encourage members to publish internationally and to use our seminar series as a platform to test their ideas and to practice before delivery at an international conference.
7. We went through many years contemplating life and death for our society. That era is behind us now. We play a useful role as the hub of a network in Ireland.

We promote management science in Ireland. If membership was on an individual basis in Europe this national promotional aspect would be lost. Through our network we hear about interesting research being carried out in Ireland possibly not strictly O.R. We invite these to give seminars. This would be lost if there was no national society.
8. We have academic and non-academic members. The academic ones do more of the work because of the direct link with the work that they do for their students. We do not make demands on non-academic members. They come when the topic is relevant to them. Those with a possible commercial interest, or who are in problem solving consultancy: IT, Multi media, IS etc. come more frequently.
9. We work on a small scale. We use university facilities to save expense. It suits the university to have a seminar that is advertised to students, graduates, faculty, business contacts, etc. It also suits them to have a national society associated with them. By using e-mail and University College Dublin's (and other colleges in Dublin) facilities we keep our costs to a minimum and so save ourselves problems with fundraising or charging for seminars. For a lot of people who come to our seminars there is a high activity cost in coming at all, without looking for money from their company or college to pay for it.
10. In the first of these articles Marc Pirlot, President of the Belgian OR Society, expressed concern about EURO overlapping what is done by national societies. We would be supportive of EURO doing relevant activities even if they overlap with what we do. We would think that it is up to us as smaller societies to build around what EURO is doing, not vice versa.  We would, however, like more communication between national societies and, so, welcome this forum. We also want more emphasis on the national websites. Ideally we would like to see a commonality of structure of simple national websites amongst EURO members. Before each country has its own different web site it would be helpful if someone who logged into any society website in Europe could easily find out about other members in Europe with similar interests. How about if the EURO website had a map of Europe and on the maps links to the member societies?
11. In summary, we would like that the concept of being a network of networks be extended to Europe through EURO and then internationally through IFORS.
12. Costas Pappis mentioned the problem of the lack of availability of younger colleagues to contribute and participate in the activities of OR societies. It has been a problem for us, but less so recently. When I took over as President the majority of the committee were near retirement and 'holding on' in the interests of continuity, but with no links to younger people. There was ongoing debate, amongst other things, about the balance of control between academics and industry. Over the years I have brought onto council some lively and energetic young graduates of our masters programme. Some are young academics such as our national secretary Joe Coughlan. Others are in business. Both benefit from the experience, from developing contacts, and it helps their curriculum vitae. We try not to pressurise members too much because everyone's job is pressurised nowadays. In particular we do not make demands on our industry members. They tend to participate as they find synergy. Roy Johnston's consultancy, IMS group, is also a networking organisation. So it makes sense for him to look after our web page at:

http://www.imsgrp.com /mssi/index.htm.
We are delighted that Fred Ridgeway is remaining on council. He recently retired from the Bank of Ireland and is well known in IFORS particularly.
13. We have a working group in Qualitative Structuring in Multi Criteria Decision Making. We are planning an international conference next January 8-10 on Philosophy in Management (from a management science perspective) and particularly emphasising East-West interaction. We hope that this would feed into the IFORS conference in Beijing in August 1999. We would agree with Costas Pappis that EURO has the key role in making such outreaches viable. We would be very supportive of the new culture which is EURO centred and Internet based.

This article has been published in the AIROnews  n°2/98, and is part of an AIRO initiative taken after the meeting of national ORS Presidents during the EURO Conference in Barcelona, July 1997.