The Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Council will be held at the Rivonia Country Club on 10 March at 18h30. Notices have been distributed as required by our Constitution.

Branch AGMs have taken place countrywide and the 2010 branch chairmen and committees being elected. I must congratulate the Durban branch which has added a number of new members to its committee. After the Durban AGM our Secretariat was inundated with new member applications. Well done Durban.

Year programmes and technology evenings are planned and all our branches are fully functional. I personally visited the Vaal branch which is a sub-branch of Johannesburg where they had 50 members attending their braai and New Year committee meeting. They will soon be competing for the branch of the year award.

The SAIMC was once again allocated a stand at the Cape Town 'Control Road Show' where they had 268 visitors on the day, 18 visitors completed SAIMC membership application forms.

ECSA has again approached us for nominations to its council and we have nominated Johan Maartens to represent us this year. I would like to thank Johan for giving up his time to maintain our relationship with ECSA; and to advance Automation Measurement and Control on this higher level.

Our Website has taken a lot of work in creating a new webpage with its necessary links. However, hosting it making it live without losing the existing domain with our unique e-mail addresses has proven to be a challenge of its own.

A number of our Student Members have now been re-graded to Full Members and some of our members have been promoted to Senior Members. If you are a member and would like to be re-graded to Senior Member all you need do is send an e-mail to Claire to make application. Your application will be tabled for approval at the next council meeting.