Interview of the Month: Macedonian Association of Aeronautical Meteorologists

Interview with Vesna Cvetkovska, President of the Zdruzenie na Vozduhoplovni Meteorolozi – Meteo (ZVMM) by the EMS Liaison Committee (EMS LC)

EMS LC: If you were to describe your society in one sentence, what would you say?

ZVMM: Our society aims to promote best practice in aeronautical meteorology through collaboration and exchange of experience and lessons learned between members.

EMS LC: When was ZVMM founded?

ZVMM: ZVMM was founded in 2000.

EMS LC: What are the objectives of ZVMM?

ZVMM: Our objectives are to help aeronautical meteorologists work together on similar ideas with enthusiasm and to maintain a high level of professionalism by exchanging ideas and good practice.

EMS LC: Could you explain the structure of your membership?

ZVMM: The members of the ZVMM are almost all professionals in the field of aeronautical meteorology who work as forecasters and observers at the two international airports in Macedonia. Some also teach aviation meteorology at the local aero clubs.

EMS LC: What are ZVMM’s recent achievements?

ZVMM: In 2016 the society hosted the annual meeting of aeronautical meteorologists from the Balkan region.

EMS LC: Where do you see the greatest challenges?

ZVMM: The greatest challenge at the moment is to raise and enhance public awareness of all areas of meteorology, not just aeronautical meteorology.  At the moment, meteorology is not at the level that we would like it to be, so we are working on ways of promoting it.

EMS LC: Which activities are you planning for the coming months?

ZVMM: In the near future our main target is to improve collaboration with the other societies in the region, and to explore the possibilities that come with joining the EMS.

EMS LC: Are you collaborating with other EMS Members?

ZVMM: Yes. We currently collaborate with the Bulgarian Aviometeoclub.

EMS LC: What do you expect from the EMS? In what ways can it help you to develop your activities?

ZVMM: We applied for membership of the EMS in order to meet more experienced meteorological professionals, who can give us some guidelines on the challenges that lie ahead of us. It will enable us to access more educational material, conferences, workshops, etc., and will give us tools to update our meteorology skills, which we can later share with our local colleagues.

EMS LC: What have been your most successful events in the last three years?

ZVMM: Our most successful recent event has been the hosting of the annual meeting of the regional societies of aeronautical meteorologists in 2016. These meetings always take part around World Meteorological Day, 23rd of March. For the 2016 meeting we had the highest number of participating countries to date. Members from Macedonia, Slovenia, Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Croatia all took park.

EMS LC: What changes do you believe your society needs to make?

ZVMM: We believe ZVMM should be more active domestically and internationally. Our members have a high workload and this limits our society from organising larger, more time-consuming activities. As we said, by joining EMS we expect some guidelines for improvement of our society.

EMS LC: Thank you very much for the interview.