President's Report from Paul Hilton

PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

July 2010

Firstly let me take this opportunity to thank Stewart Williams for his last two years as President of AILU. During this period Stewart steered the association through some significant changes, including access to Knowledge Transfer Network funding and changes in the way the AILU committee operates. As I take over from Stewart, we have a new Government in the UK, there is talk of a double dip recession and it is clear that there will be significant cuts in public expenditure.

An obvious question is ‘How will this affect AILU?’ The answer is simply that we do not know, but a key issue in the coming months will be to maintain AILU Membership. At the recent AGM, Mike Green presented figures which showed that we were now experiencing a reduction in membership numbers, something which has not really happened before. This is at a time when AILU is extending the services it offers to its membership. We now have an even better web-site, we have introduced the e-newsletter, the magazine goes from strength to strength and we are also in the process of instigating a 2 day conference, here in the UK, on laser materials processing.

I would like to encourage all current members to positively consider these and the other networking benefits presented by AILU, when you receive your next membership invoice. If the level of service provided is to be maintained, then we can only do this by turning round the recent reduction in membership. In respect to the latter, I am sure this topic will also be of major concern to the members of the AILU steering committee, without whose help and assistance, the association could not offer the services it does today.

Paul Hilton
paul.hilton@twi.co.uk


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