Search the Site

AFCEA Southern – President’s AGM Report - 17 Jun 10

Thank you for joining us tonight at the culmination of our 09/10 season. And it has been a busy season too with speakers covering a wide gamut of topics under the broad context of security. We also held a successful symposium in the MWS in November with over 120 delegates attending a thought provoking and fact-packed agenda. Attendance at events creeps slowly upwards as we re-establish ourselves and get people back into the habit of thinking that the 3^rd Thursday in the month is AFCEA night.

As you will hear from the Treasurer, we are financially sound and are trading at a small profit. As a result of the success of the Symposium have been able to donate £8000 to the Academic Trust, as well as a donation to Help for Heroes – how wonderful to see the founders recognised with OBEs – and the Gwinelli Trust. More on the Gwenilli a wee bit later when Chris Williams will give us a quick 5 minutes description of the wonderful work that they do getting disabled people out sailing.

On the Academic Trust front, both Tom Moncur and I have the honour of being trustees. The trust does tremendous work with awarding prizes to the ‘top’ – and there are various local definitions of ‘top’ – students on service C4ISTAR courses. I have placed a list of the courses we support and you may be surprised at the number and breadth that are awarded. None of this, however, would be possible without the hard work of the various UK Chapters in raising funds for the Trust. You in Southern have been by far the most generous of these benefactors!

We have also been able to get the efforts of two of our stalwarts recognised by AFCEA International. Both Captain ‘Muz’ Murray and WO Tony Nichols tremendous energy and enthusiasm in, respectively, pushing Southern and the sub-chapter here at Blandford forward. Well done to them both.

Membership stands at 102. This is hearteningly up on this time last year. The committee is working hard at improving this still further and indeed has spent all day today on considering innovative approaches to this whole challenging area, including re-instigating the local running of the membership system.

Forthcoming events:

·       of major note are the 26 Oct Student Event and 28/29 Oct Technet International, both @ QE2 Conference Centre in London – The theme is ‘Integrating Cyberspace into the Battlespace’

·       and next season’s programme (slide) …..

·       ….. BUT we are watching the SD&SR very closely. Secretary State for Defence, Liam Fox, language “a step change not minor tinkering with the system” “a clean break from the military and political mindset of Cold War politics” and actions (“CDS & PUS retiring”) are convincingly robust. Unsurprisingly, the review will centre on 3 pillars:

o   strategy & policy

o   armed forces

o   procurement & estates

He will obviously only have limited room for manoeuvre if there is not significant re-thinking of all of the above. Our spies are telling us that the currently emerging plans are too much ‘more of the same’ and are not considered to be radical enough. Previously outrageous concept such as a tri-service CIS branch may well be small beer in the scheme of things! As the outcomes become clearer we intend to reassess the forthcoming season’s programme to ensure that it as relevant as possible to the new world which we find ourselves in, both professional knowledge and business opportunities.

Back to today. You will have seen in the foyer the Tabletop Displays.  VMT to all those companies that have made this possible today, including Luciad from Belgium. There will be further opportunities for industry to ‘tabletop’ their C4ISTAR capabilities over the year.

So in summary, VMT for all of the support of both yourselves, in general, and your committee, in particular. Without them none of the season’s events would be possible and I am deeply grateful to the committee for their untiring efforts and selfless support.  Can I ask you to show your appreciation in the traditional way. We are, of course, always looking for new blood on the committee.

Back to the Secretary….