Hi All
Below is a message from Ray Williams our new leader. Note his plea for much-needed subscriptions and the convenience of his attachment.
Regards
Mike
It is nearing Christmas and I am joining in the spirit of this, the end of the calendar year, to send an end of year report including a look into the future.
Since I took on the mantle of Chairman of SIGnet, passed to me by John Lander, I have found more than enough to occupy my time. SIGnet is alive and it is thriving. Indeed, I am finding problems in adding new members to a number of groups because they are fully subscribed. In fact, we are having to create new groups such is the demand. There is a new group meeting in Manchester in January. A new group is starting in February in London and an embryonic Essex group (which of course is what some successful groups have grown from) has been created. We would be starting new groups in Liverpool and in the Hertfordshire area, if we had the resources. There are requests, too, for new specialist groups for women and for a group with a derivatives slant.
That is the good news. The other news is that Signet is woefully under resourced, we lack manpower, we lack investment funds we lack the time and ability to communicate with members as we would want to and as I know members would like. We have had enormous problems in setting up an effective administration function. This has still not been resolved and without which SIGnet cannot support an effective membership recruitment effort, or a newsletter, or an improved website. These would all be important contributions to making SIGnet an even better organisation for serious investors who want to develop their skills, which is the SIGnet that I am aiming for.
There is one gaping hole that we can address. For too long the Convenors for the Groups have been left on the sidelines. It is the Convenors who give their time to organising the Groups and creating successful meetings. They also offer the opportunity to spread and facilitate best practice in running the groups and in making the experience of the meetings more valuable to the members. Conveners are a source of coherence within SIGnet, enabling SIGnet to develop a core of experience and continuity which is extremely valuable, but there is little opportunity to build on the work of the Convenors at present. To address this a Convenor’s meeting is planned, hopefully early in the New Year. At this meeting Convenors will have the opportunity to meet each other, to hear the latest developments in SIGnet and to participate in a mixture of presentations and developmental exercises.
Finally, more on the future. SIGnet is a concept that I find enormous enthusiasm for in any forum for investors and I do have investors frequently ringing me up asking why they haven’t yet been invited to a group meeting despite showing their interest. The answer is simple, we don’t have the resources or time to respond and communicate in a timely manner. We need an effective administration, a working newsletter and an updated website. For these reasons we have been talking to Share Soc to see if there is an opportunity there to use their well-developed functions in these areas to help SIGnet to grow. I want to stress that we are very jealous of the SIGnet culture and as such whatever we do in the future has to respect our culture and strengthen it. I hope to have more news on this front in the New Year.
Finally, January 1st represents the start of new calendar year for subscriptions. These subscriptions are SIGnet’s lifeblood and it is more important than ever to pay and collect these. The funds that everyone will give to SIGnet in 2019 will be used to revive and enliven SIGnet so that every member benefits from the service supplied by core SIGnet.
The subscription will remain at £25 in 2019. I am keen to maximise SIGnet’s funding to ensure we can more rapidly develop the structure that SIGnet needs to grow and at the same time minimise the burden on Convenors of collecting and submitting subscriptions. To this end I attach a standing order form for members to use instead of cash or cheque.
This email is going to all the Convenors and in the knowledge that other members of SIGnet would want to be kept abreast of developments please do forward this report to your members.
With my Best Wishes for Christmas
Ray Williams
Chairman for SIGnet
Virus-free.
www.avast.com
