From The President November 2019

John Hall

Our new committee

In my September President’s Report I asked for volunteers to nominate for the upcoming committee and I am very pleased to say that we have filled all of the “executive” positions and we also have 9 nominees for the rest of the committee which has resulted in us having to call an election for the 8 positions that are “non-executive”.

The last remaining executive position was that of Treasurer and I am very pleased to report that Peter McConnachie (who I worked with at Coles Myer and is a qualified accountant) will be taking over the position from Stewart Gruneklee.

Peter is a relatively new member who joined our Genealogy SIG in Mornington and it is re-assuring that we can continue to attract new members through our SIG activities in this manner.

I am also pleased to report that 5 of the nominating members are relatively new additions who have joined our group through the activities of the Melbourne Computer Club.

I see this fact alone as an endorsement of the actions that our committee has taken over the past 3 years since I joined, as it means that we now have a young, energetic and enthusiastic team who will hopefully lead us over the years to come in the same spirit that members such as John Swale (member 16) have led us in the past.

I am also very grateful to David Stonier-Gibson for taking over from me as President.

David also joined us through our new “Meetup” channel and has a rapport with the newer (dare I say “younger”) members of our club and his enthusiasm and leadership skills will no doubt provide valuable guidance to our incoming committee.

Finally, as this is my last report as President I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of the committee members that I have worked with over the past 3 years for enabling us to reduce the annual loss of over $200,000 per annum for the consecutive years from 2013 to 2015 (i.e. over $600,00 loss) to a modest but satisfactory profit of $477 this past financial year!!!

When I recently asked one of our members wanted he wanted from our club he said he just “wanted it to survive’!!!

I think that we can proudly say that we have achieved that goal and I hope that we will not only “survive” but that we can “thrive” under the leadership of our new younger committee.