2021: Volume 5: Issue 1
■ Sijtze de Roos
Threatened by corona, the world changed. Everything turned topsy turvy. All of a sudden it proved practically impossible to do even the simplest things and to perform even the most ordinary everyday tasks. Shopping, enjoying a cappuccino on a sidewalk café, picking a flic at the local cinema, visiting friends, meeting your lover (furtively or overtly), going to school, taking part in conferences or travelling to ANSE meetings; all of this and much more slipped out of our reach. All that we so easily took for granted turned out to be potentially corrupt, a source of contamination, a threat to our health.
The world changed and we had to change with it. To stay connected we - as professional supervisors and coaches - were forced to turn to online technology, distance learning, video coaching or zoom supervision. Some of us were already comfortable with - and proficient in - the virtual channeling of human connections, others less so and some not (yet) at all. But none of us ever imagined that the switch to the online world would be so comprehensive and confront us so intensively with psychological, professional and technical challenges.
And here we are, perforce finding new ways to deal with space and time and to practice our trade, exploring exciting new approaches, reinventing our social methodologies, adapting to screen-filtered human interaction. In less than two corona-ridden years we gathered and systematized heaps of experience. Behind our smart devices, screens and monitors we went through challenging and frustrating episodes, through ambiguous and - certainly also - joyful and even exhilarating online events. Is it not fitting that we dedicate this issue to the topic of digitalization, presenting a fine array of examples of dealing with such experiences?
But before we come to that, let me first introduce our brand new Editorial Board. Up till now, Barbara Baumann, succeeded by Reijer Jan van’t Hul and since beginning last year by yours truly, took care of contacts with national editors, text acquisition and the final editing phase practically on their own. But since its formal installment on January 20th of this year, we may rely on a diverse and highly competent company of editors, gathered together in a full blown Editorial Board. These are the colleagues that from this issue on carry the load of this magazine for you:..... ■
