With James Collett, President of CIRM welcoming members and guests with an overview of CIRM Frances Baskerville follows with her opening report (below) to the CIRM Membership at the Annual Conference 2022, held currently at the Hilton Hotel, St Julian’s Malta.
“You haven’t seen me for a couple of years, and indeed some of you won’t even have met me before – and for those of you that haven’t, I am Frances Baskerville and my role within CIRM changed this year to one of more of an ‘overseer of the membership’, a recruiter of new members and a trouble shooter for members who want help with business issues, and so on. One of my most important messages to you today is to thank you, very much from myself, the Secretariat and of course, the Board of Directors, for your continued support with your membership of CIRM, which helps us to grow into an even bigger and better organisation, year by year.
Over the next ten minutes or so I am to give you a membership report here – normally you will hear about this kind of thing at our AGM – the next one being most likely, but not necessarily, in the Spring of 2023. But there are a few things to say today to bring you up to date with our most recent activities in the membership area. Needless to say, there have been changes, but we are still doing very well.
After our prolonged separation, meaning a complete lack of face to face interaction, many of you know that there was, at last, a very successful technical meeting held in person in Belfast earlier this year – members travelled from as far as Japan to northern Ireland, which was highly appreciated; apart from the very strong technical content and hard work that was achieved, I can honestly tell you that members had an absolute ball, as I understand it. Not only did they work hard, but virtual golf, great food and may I say seriously good Guinness meant for a satisfied crowd. We always seem to be able to provide the membership with a positive gathering; you received a great and detailed technical report from Richard on that meeting and what was achieved. Thanks to him and Colleen for organising it. I was unable to attend as I was in Greece for Posidonia.
We hope that you will feel very positive about days here in Malta too. It’s taken a monumental amount of organizing to get here today and we could not have done this without the support of Baran Fidenboy of CSA Group who is based here in Malta and the considerable help from our member company and friend from YDDO – Kutlay, who has a subsidiary company based in Malta called AnnShip. Malta Enterprise, who you will meet, have also been incredibly supportive to us, and they would be to you too if you wish to talk to them about the advantages of conducting business or opening offices here.
We have different kinds of member companies. Within these, there are the very technical individuals who are striving for development perfection for their companies – they want to produce the best product in their field, despite these last two very tough years and continuing difficulties with obtaining parts – and then there are the Business Developers who are keen to make sales, have new contacts and contracts and who generally keep away from getting involved with the intricate details. Plus we look after quite a few ship service providers – these are the guys who really need to know what is happening and we are very glad to be able to satisfy their needs. Our membership is split very approximately into thirds between these factions and so when we come to organising a conference we are catering from one end of the spectrum to the other. You will understand that having a very mixed bag of member companies to look after is, at times challenging. However, the membership report back to us that all is well. Do always feedback so that we can continue to improve our service to you.
You know that we attend trade shows when we can, and both Posidonia and SMM were really useful from the point of view of catching up and of course in spreading the word about CIRM. I would like to welcome Marine Mechanics of India, Avikus of Korea, Dryad Global of the USA and Seall Ecdis of the UK to the membership … not everyone has been able to join us here, but these are our newest companies to join the fold.
Our current Mission statement is
To ensure our members’ experience, knowledge and capabilities are represented and shared in the development of marine electronics regulations, standards, guidelines and best practices for the advancement of the industry and our members.
I take this opportunity to say that we are fundamentally an organisation of technical experts that review and assist industry rather than influence – although there are times when of course we apply pressure for a good and safe reason. Members, I must remind you that we must be perceived as neutral at the IMO as I’m sure you all understand. However, If you wish us to drive for change you must let us know what you want. Again, please give us your thoughts and we will always endeavour to adjust and accommodate you.
Finally, thanks to those of you who have brought material to display in the foyer outside. I would love to know why more of you don’t take up the offer of free space to advertise… can you see me later on that? Also, you know that we have an in house magazine ‘Spotlight’ that is your platform. You can send me any article about your work, that we will include for publication. I know it takes time to write an article, but please do take advantage of this benefit and many of you have. With members permission, articles are republished to the web within All About Shipping and their reach is absolutely phenomenal at an absolute minimum of 25,000 readers per month and has reached 35,000 to 37,000 on five occasions. So worth it I think!
To finish, thank you to you for joining CIRM and being part of our growing association. We recognise how important you are and you are very valued to us. We know you take your precious time to participate when often you are up against it. So many of you are involved in what we do and you do understand the value of CIRM. We pay attention to your comments and work to ensure that your experience is the best it can be. Tell us if it isn’t! Don’t forget our resources, be engaged (as you are) and use us whenever you can.”
The CIRM conference is currently on Day Two – programme available on www.cirm.org
