A year of opportunities and challenges

As the summer heat leaves us it is time to focus on the coming year, with all the opportunities and challenges this will bring.

During February we held our annual planning day in Melbourne with the committee discussing detailed plans for 2016. I am pleased to report that 2016 will see a program further expanded to provide even more value for all supporters.

Firstly we welcome Geoff Spring to the executive of the association to assist with policy work. Geoff has long experience with critical communications and I am looking forward to working with him on all facets of the association.

We continue to work with Westwick-Farrow and Comms Connect to bring content, subject matter experts and training subjects to our industry events around Australia. These events worked well in 2015 and we want to give our members more reason to invest their time in them. Many members need to travel long distances to the major centres and we must provide good reason to do so.

ARCIA will also be producing best practice white papers on subjects that we believe are need to educate the market. The most recently released paper is on IECEx Intrinsic Safety standards and why they matter, but, more importantly, how to recognise where they are appropriate. This white paper is available on our website, www.arcia.org.au/intrinsicsafety.

Further papers are under development on the operations of UHF CB radios and radio site management and installation guidelines.

ARCIA will also be improving how we communicate to industry members and users via website improvements and social media. I would encourage all of our readers to seek out ARCIA on Twitter to keep up to date about what the association is doing.

Looking forward to seeing you around Australia during 2016

Hamish Duff

President

Australian Radio Communications Industry Association