Welcome to September, so called because it was the 7^th (septum) month of the 10-month Roman calendar that then became the 9^th month of the 12-month Julian calendar when Julius Caesar added 2 more months, Jan and Feb, in 45BC. Why you ask, is Jacinta waffling on about calendars and months in the ASSBI newsletter? Well I don’t know about you but from my perspective, time now flies by so quickly that I reckon it’s about time we added another 2 months to the end of the calendar!! We could call them farbehindber and caughtupber! By the way, I think that Margaret, our CEO extraordinaire, already has 2 months hidden away somewhere because she ensures ASSBI has so much to offer our membership in any given year.

Back in July, the real 7^th month of the year, ASSBI members were out en masse showcasing ground-breaking research at the Neuropsychological Rehabilitation Special Interest Group (NR-SIG) meeting of the World Federation of Neurorehabilitation (WFNR) and the International Neuropsychological Society (INS) meeting in Prague. It never ceases to amaze me how impressively our doctoral candidates, and early, mid and established career researchers perform on the world stage – congratulations to all those who yet again demonstrated excellence in their fields.

At the same time in Prague, ASSBI took the opportunity of entering into a formal agreement with INS by signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the two organisations. During the closing ceremony of the Prague meeting, myself as president of ASSBI and Keith Yeates as president of INS signed an MOU reflecting our societies’ mutual commitment to working together on matters of common concern and in the public interest. Indeed the Constitution of ASSBI and the Bylaws of INS share mutual objectives which include both organizations’ emphasis on multidisciplinary membership and the importance of their scientific, clinical, and educational missions and the MOU provides us with a framework to support ongoing cooperation.

Thinking about our organisational partnerships, brings me to an important reminder: our 2019, 42^nd Annual Brain Impairment conference will be held in Wellington in collaboration with the New Zealand Rehabilitation Association (NZRA) Biannual conference as the inaugural ASSBI NZRA Trans Tasman Conference AND the call for abstracts is now open. Our theme is A Call for Action, so take action now and submit you abstract HERE

While we don’t have those extra 2 months I fantasised about at the beginning of my September President’s words, we do have plenty of upcoming activities and opportunities to keep members super active including 4 upcoming workshops on the NDIS (Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney), the 2^nd (Sept) 2018 issue of Brain Impairment, resources to download or purchase and abstracts to submit.

Best wishes to you all,
Jacinta Douglas, President