This month started with an executive board meeting and an update from our financial advisers, I will leave the complicated business of investments and the financial management to our treasurers a finance manager, but as with our membership numbers, we have turned a corner and are on the correct path to a better financial footing.
There was lots of discussion regarding regional committees and also the role that Councillors take within the region, they are your conduit for suggestions on policy, strategy or to raise issues or technical publication requests - please use them - they are your voice at National Level.
I also attended the Lighting Journal editorial board meeting this month, which is the annual strategy meeting with regard to trying to plan themes and articles for the forthcoming year, as well as a review of the magazine and its design.
If whilst you are attending a regional technical meeting and view a presentation that you think is interesting and informative, then drop us a line via your Councillor or Regional Chair and we will then approach the presenter to create an article for the journal so that all of us can learn from the topic that spiked your interest!
On the 21st October I chaired the most recent Professional Industry Partners (PIP) forum, with the topic of sustainability. We had representatives from each of the PIP's, - WSP / Orangetek / iGuzzini, from the Lighting Industry Asociation (LIA), Recolight, Skanska, Building Research Establishment (BRE) and John Bullock. the whole event has been covered by the lighting Journal and will appear shortly. The event was to try and define "what is sustainability in the lighting industry" and although there was a huge amount of discussion and some agreed conclusions and targets for future discussions, i am not sure we have a conclusive statement.
There's a good reason for that, sustainability means a lot of different things to different people, it is not easy to define. this has been shown again when this week we have had warnings of potential blackouts across the UK due to insufficient energy supply in the grid - what do we do? switch street lights off? build more wind farms? import more gas? start up the old coal fired power station? or all of these things?
it is not a simple solution, its very easy to say use less energy and turn street lights off, but is that a solution? - I would say no, there's far more energy wasted by shops and offices keeping their lights on all night. what we need is a comprehensive understanding of the whole issue and a genuine mix of all of these solutions to the energy crisis, along with education, technology investment and competent engineers and designers to assist clients and government to make informed choices.
contact me at:
twitter @mclight0112
No comments:
Post a Comment