Our branch meeting for May proved to be a welcome relief from the usual 'Bus'-based talks we seem to attract so often; Mike Sessions of Mitech gave a very interesting and informative overview on 'Severe services control valves'. It was a very refreshing look at extreme valve applications in our industry and how these applications are approached and solved by companies like Mitech.
At this meeting the Johannesburg Committee once again showed initiative with the new 'computerised' attendance register, making it possible for members to merely locate and tick their name off in the block provided for that purpose. No more hand-written attendance lists that have to be captured afterwards. First-time visitors to our monthly meetings fill their details in only once and at the next meeting they attend they also just tick their names off the list. Just another way to make our meetings more streamlined.
Our June meeting saw Tony Holme of Citect giving a very lively talk on modern scada systems. Tony is a long serving and loyal member of the SAIMC, is one of our previous Chairmen and is currently serving as a member of Council. So dedicated is he and Citect to the SAIMC, that they already booked a second talk in October this year titled 'Use of configured software standards'. Make a note for 10 October in your diaries now.
In July Endress+Hauser will host the meeting and speak about safety systems, and in August we will learn more about fiscal metering from the guys at Liquid Automation Systems. September has been provisionally booked by Dave Howcroft of Instrotech for a talk on microprosessor development, and Spescom is also standing in line for the same month. Man it is nice to be popular!
Database
The latest and updated electronic mailing list of members for Johannesburg officially stands at 320. That is to say, we invite 320 members every month to our branch meetings and we get around 20 to 30 attending at most. That is less than 10%!
Just to recap: at our meetings, everyone drinks on the house, there are free snacks for everybody (the best warm and cold snacks available anywhere), free information on up-to-date and highly relevant topics and the best conversation this side of the Jukskei. Come join us and see for yourselves.
Site visits
We are planning a trip to see what Telkom is up to at the Telkom Control Centre by the end of August, and the ever-popular visit to the BMW works in Rosslyn is to take place by the end of July. In the tube (pun intended) is a planned visit to the Aquafresh factory soon - watch this space.
Special events
The Johannesburg Branch will be entering the annual Red Bull Flugtag 2002 competition. Patron members will be approached for sponsorship and members are invited to submit designs for a flying machine. The member whose design is accepted will be on the team and if our team wins, the designer will win the prize for him/herself.
Branch of the Year
Talks are underway to rename this contest as there are only two branches competing for this award every year and we all know who they are.
Johan Steyn, [email protected]
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