These are my last Rambling notes, before I retire as President of the Southern Federation.

It has been a steep learning curve, especially the first year and I hadn’t envisaged the workload that is involved - however with the assistance from the Council Members, who each and everyone of them has dedicated their time and effort, unpaid as well, to ensure that the tasks expected of them are carried out. Be it the Annual Exhibition, Print Competition, Annual League battles, the new Digital Image Competition, the handbook and the Newsletters, they dont just happen by magic!!!!

Possibly the biggest event of the year and which didnt involve the Clubs was our turn to arrange and host the PAGB inter Federation Slide Competition, other than the expense!! It involved a tremendous amount of man hours, mine in particular and then the hire of a hall for a weekend to sort and have the entries judged. Then the catalogue to be designed and printed and also duplicating of the slides to show Clubs around the Country, getting advertising to assist the costs, which hadnt happened in the previous year! Talk about having to reinvent the wheel!!! How other federations managed is a wonder!! However this years event will be run by the Yorkshire Union Federation, they have all our paperwork to assist them in their task and have already been in contact recently, and are grateful for our input.
This year, in fact this month, sees the PAGB Awards weekend hosted by the Southern Federation, an amazing amount of work involving not only our PAGB REP Leo Rich, but Jack & Liz Whitemore who have done all the organising for this event. Entries from all over the country some 100 entries overall, what a tremendous amount of work put to our council - all this and monthly council meetings as well as the Reps quarterly ones.

In future we are hoping to involve all clubs more in the running of the Federation, by sending out to all Clubs not only the minutes of the meetings this will now include reports from sections of the council so that each and every Club will have the opportunity to ask questions on a timed basis and bring up queries etc. The AGM will include things like, Numbers of Natural History entries? Insurance problems, with the new health and safety elements, Photography in public places? and others we are hoping that this will encourage more clubs to attend the meetings to voice their opinions and have a more positive input than before.

Our second Digital Imaging Comp was held recently at Newburys meeting hall. Very comfortable it is too. Some 21 Clubs entered and although we were greeted by snow first thing in the morning we had approx 80 members attending. I would like to see this increased a lot, as many Clubs now enjoy digital images and even some who haven’t yet purchased a digital projector have sent entries in. Our sister federation, Western Counties Federation, who have 98 clubs in total to our 68, had 43 entries and 200, yes, 200 members attend their 3rd D.P.I.Comp so we have to get with it and drum up more support especially as your council, are recommending that we drop the future Slide Competition, due to fall off and costs. Talking of costs the Western Counties are finding like us that printing costs are through the roof, they spent over £300 more than we did which at least makes us feel a little better. Even so we are looking towards an annual directory instead of the Handbook in its present form, which will hopefully be a direct saving to us, putting rules etc. on the website.

Lastly I am delighted to tell you that Lynn Lambeth, our Federation Secretary, has agreed to stand as President, she will I know make an excellent job of this, her handling of her past post has been no less than excellent, and has given me great support all through my own term of office. Also Chris, Neill-Griffin has agreed to take over Lynns job as Secretary with help from Terri as well. Both who are great workers as many of us already know. I wish also to thank most sincerely all the Council members who have given me great support over the past two years without them our successes would have been minimal, and my job more difficult. Many Clubs have seen increased membership and lets hope this carries on to swell our numbers even more and that we will see lots more distinctions gained ensuring even more success in competitions for the future. One last thing, how about some of your club secretary’s giving a write up in the Exposure newsletter of your own Club, how is it doing? increased membership? interesting lecturers that we all may benefit from?. There are a lot of highly qualified people out there and it would be great to hear about them.

Once again many thanks to you all for your friendship and as I have said before. let us - Adapt, Adopt and Improve - our hobby is Photography.

Ian Bigg LRPS CPAGB
President
Southern Federation