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Members meet in East Mids for topical discussion
The East Midlands and Anglian Region of BAPCO held a meeting in Peterborough on the first of February...
The East Midlands and Anglian Region of BAPCO held a meeting in Peterborough on the first of February. The aim of the meeting was to determine what members wanted from the Region, and how they preferred it to be delivered. The meeting followed on from the recent re-evaluation of the aims and purpose of BAPCO and was intended to emphasise the role and importance of the Region.
A reasonable but small group of members heard three presentations: Carl Cochrane of Hyder, covered the future trends within the convergence arena, pointing out that convergence is not only technical but also a multi-dimensional transformation, Peter Graham of Mentis who developed some extremely interesting ideas about the use of mesh Wi- Fi for cheap and automatically set up incident ground communications between disparate agencies and Tony Pinsent, the 21CN manager at BT for Government, who elaborated on the effects of 21CN on existing services and gave an outline timetable for the cessation of those existing services we take for granted such as out-of-area extensions and iSDNs. The replacement of the latter appears to be a potentially expensive exercise and some services cease in six months time!
After the speakers, and an excellent buffet, the meeting moved on to discussing the future of the Region. Ken Mott, BAPCO, Chief Executive, explained the new BAPCO Strategy, which emphasises the importance of the User-lead formation of BAPCO and strongly reinforces the importance of the Regions in providing user-feedback to the centre. The region then participated in a quiz, which was intended to double as a questionnaire, with the prize: a rejuvenated and more effective region. A significant consensus suggested that the existing way the region operates events was not far from the optimum, but a large number of suggestions and comments were recorded and these will now be analysed and acted upon. The sting in the tail of the quiz was the final question which asked for volunteers to serve on the committee. I am delighted to be able to say that a quorum of enthusiastic volunteers came forward and a brief meeting of the new committee was held after the main meeting closed.
That leads me to say a heartfelt thank you to Peter Norval who valiantly fulfiled the role of Secretary for a considerable time but has now resigned for personal reasons. Thank you for all of your efforts, Peter.
The new committee will be meeting again shortly and it is hoped the region will be able to stage two further events this year, the first of which will include a formal AGM .
David Seelhoff,
Chairman EM&EA Region.
