April Review

Welcome back and yet another month has flown by.

Traditionally April and May are mad months for the President and this year that is no exception.

Having attended the L&SE AGM 25 March The CEO and myself were back on the road again for 3 days on the bounce

First up was the Midlands Region AGM 1^st April held at the new City Library in Birmingham. For those members who missed it what a fantastic venue, amazing building. Following the formalities of the day we were given a talk by a member of the Library staff about the new building and its contents. Followed by your very own SVP who presented his talk on SmartCities an interesting concept and not as far away as we all may wish to think!!

From there I travelled North and on the 2^nd April attended the Northern AGM meeting held in Leyland (just out side of Preston). Again another great venue the Wellington Park Hotel, the staff there looked after the ILP well and once again another extremely well attended AGM. The format of the day was great. We were treated to 3 excellent papers all informative and relevant to today’s issues surrounding the lighting industry and Local Authority budget constraints.

The following day it was off to Newcastle, the journey was a tad torturous with an unexpected 1.5hr delay in Carlisle due to no driver for the train!! but as is the British way eventually I managed to make it to Newcastle. Once again the region came up trumps with an amazing venue. As in keeping with the previous AGM’s the event was well attended we were also given a presentation in the Planetarium  regarding the latest competition to get a lunar robot to Mars!

The Executive Board met on the 10^th of April to discuss the normal business criteria and address issues raised by members and regions raised at Council.

 Then on the 24^th April it was off to the Western Region to Pengethely Manor in Ross – On – Wye. Again a fantastically well attended event in a spectacular location. The Chairman had organised a paper for the afternoon which was based around Stonehenge and the significance of it . The presenter (an actual druid) was entertaining and engaging and even managed to get regional members out on the lawn dowsing!! Even the sceptics amongst the group were impressed.

My congratulations go to all new Regional Chairs

Lee Burton

Jeff Lewis

Craig Prescott

Russ Pryce

To those members who received special recognition awards congratulations and well deserved to you all.

Once again my thanks to all the regional committee and there members for making myself and Richard feel welcome at their meetings.  Please remember the offers made to you all that assistance from Rugby is always available to you; just ask.

On the 29^th April in conjunction with ac/dc we hosted our second “How to Be Brilliant Event”. However the best laid plans could not allow for the tube strike that hit which meant numbers were lower than expected, however those in attendance had an informative and worthwhile evening.

May will be equally busy with Lightscene & the Scottish AGM in Glasgow, CIBSE and the LIA are hosting their annual events, Module 3 starts w/c12th, the annual Past Presidents meeting takes place, the North Eastern Region have their Dinner Dance 23^rd and finally the Irish hold their AGM at the end of the month. I will briefly review all events next month

My thanks as always must go to my employer Skanska (IS) for supporting me with the time required to fulfil the duties as your President. Without this full support it would be extremely difficult.

You can also now follow me  @mjrugby1968
Until next time
Mark