Happy Easter everyone, hope you have been and bought your eggs?
So did you make it to Nottingham, for our first Security TWENTY event of 2018? Almost 400 of you did, so thanks everyone who turned out. We hope you all enjoyed it as much as we did. Can I thank everyone for their contributions to the charity, we raised £3,600 on the night which to be honest was a fantastic achievement, after the raffle and heads and tails games, or high or low, as I attempted to do my impression of Sir Bruce Forsyth depending on how you want to describe it. We were at a total of £2,600 but then Mark Hurst from Evolution increased it to a round £3,000. Something that he has done before. But then Stuart Norris from Grattes put up a VIP night of hospitality for two people at any O2 event (subject to availability) in the company’s hospitality box, this was won by Steven King from Zenitel for £600 which Stuart thought was such a great figure that he increased the offer from two tickets to four and hence the fantastic total value. Ever since the ST series of events began in 2013, Professional Security has sought to make the chosen charity particular either to the region or someone relevant in the industry that’s otherwise special. Nottingham’s cash was raised for Rennie Grove Hospice Care in memory of Alan Walker of CDVI, who died of cancer last year. After all that excitement we were visited by Elvis! Yep, it seems that reports of his death were exaggerated! He now goes under the guise of Brian Wheeler who works at Secom. I am seeking out anyone that has a hidden talent like Brian to entertain us at these charity nights; so if you are one of those then get in touch.
The following day was very busy as you can imagine and if you pop over to our website you will see the pictures in the gallery section. We has some 82 exhibitors waiting for the visitors who came in their numbers as I have already mentioned. I was interested to hear from one exhibitor the other week who has ended up entering into a partnership with his fellow neighbour exhibitor in marketing terms and as a result are offering a joint solution which has resulted in orders for them already. Many delegates commented on the great selection of exhibitors, great speakers and all said the time taken from their busy lives was worth every minute.
Next stop is Glasgow for our ST18 Scotland conference and exhibition, on Tuesday May 1. The charity dinner will be on the night before, of course; so come along, you know you want to. This time we are raising money for Graeme Hazelwood’s charity; more about that below.
So what about those movers and shakers? OK. Talking of Secom, I see Steve Cruickshank has joined them. Yep, the same Steve that was with CBC and ADI before trying a spell out of the industry selling plumbing stuff? Welcome back to the real world Steve. Dean Brazenall (spelt correctly Dean) has been promoted so it seems he is now the Vice President of Sales EMEA at Indigovision, and talking of promotions I also understand the Jamie Barmfield at IDIS has been promoted to the UK Sales Director for IDIS Europe. Congratulations to both of you.
Neil Garner has joined Wavestore to look after the North and Ireland! Neil has worked within the electronic security industry since 2005 and was Regional Sales Manager for Avigilon or should I say Motorola!
Richard Huison, formerly of Vanderbilt Industries, has just joined Gallagher Security as Business Development Manager with a particular focus on access control.
Now I don’t know if you have heard of Ring.com the company that will sell you a video doorbell that works on your wifi and is fitted with motion detection etc etc well they seem to be appearing on lots of doors these days, anyhow they have just been acquired by Amazon at what is alleged to be somewhere between a billion and 1.8 billion dollars, is this so that Amazon can now have video proof they delivered their packages I wonder?
It is with deep sadness to report that the NSI inform us that our friend and colleague Graeme Hazlewood died on the morning of Tuesday, March 6, after a long and courageous battle with cancer. The NSI said that the funeral is on March 29 at Henley in Arden; their sincere and heartfelt thoughts are with Graeme’s family. Graeme was a man of great bravery, positivity and humour not least displayed during his fight against cancer over the last 18 months. He was highly respected by all those with whom he associated, He was always smiling as he made others do around him. Collections are being raised for the Anthony Nolan charity which is a UK charity that works in the areas of leukaemia and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. And as a mark of respect to him we will adopt this as our chosen charity in Glasgow.
