What a great summer it’s been so far, and it was even very nice in Manchester at our latest Security TWENTY event, ST19 for short. Did you come along? You missed out if you didn’t but take a look at the photos on our website if you missed it.
The dinner the night before raised a massive £1450 for the “Make a wish foundation”, a great charity that supports children whom are dealing with either a disability or serious illness, to be able to make their wish come true. These are not impossible and not expensive to make happen. Sure, some want to go and see Santa in Lapland but some might just want to go to see a local football match. So thanks to everyone that made our fund-raising possible, all those manufacturers, distributors and exhibitors for their raffle donations, and to all of you that bought the raffle tickets and played the higher and lower game (my new heads and tails).
We had a great day also on the Tuesday at the exhibition and conference, some great speakers and some 70 exhibitors. Thanks to all of them and now we have Irish roadshow. Yep we are off to Belfast for the first time. Same format, a charity dinner on the Monday night, September 2, then and exhibition and conference on the Tuesday. Then we drive across the border to Dublin, to do it all again, dinner on Wednesday, September 4, and the event proper on the Thursday (pictured is ST18 Dublin). Are you going to join us, go on, go on, you know you want to and I promise you there are loads of benefits in joining us. Come along and bring your peers, boss or even customers, or bring them all.
Date details and how to register on this link; note we have the dates for your diaries for the ST20 series, to November next year.
Let’s not waffle on about ST, and let’s get into that gossip. Have you heard that Camilla Kirkham is leaving Norbain. Yep it is a shocker, Camilla has been with Norbain since 1994, that’s 25 years having worked her way up to becoming the Divisional Director of sales for National Accounts. She has been spending her time in the sun doing the gardening but has just started at a company called Nimans? Nope I’ve not heard of them either but apparently they have a turnover of £130m and want to move into audio-visual and security so Camilla has joined them as Director of Sales for the AV and Security. Good luck Camilla.
Likewise Paul Tagger has left Arecont Vision after seven years where he was the UK Managing Director, and has joined NVT Phybridge as the EMEA Managing Director. Paul has of course been in the industry as some of you will know for some time and we first met when he was at Telindus, back in 2006.
DVS continues to be one of those companies that’s always expanding, and recruiting-wise they have three new starters in their sales department. They are Andrew Mcilhiney, Internal Sales; Rebecca Davies, Sales Coordinator; and Emma Shand, Sales Coordinator.
ATG Access have appointed Iain Moran as its new Sales and Marketing Director. Iain has been in the business for nearly 20 years and will manage a team of 11.
And talking access control, just as I went to print last month and it was early because of IFSEC we learnt that TDSI have been acquired, by VITAPROTECH Group, a French access control and electronic banking product company. As I understand it John Davies is staying on for a few years as a consultant to help merge the business and grow it further through more acquisitions; and indeed last month it acquired another French company, Vauban Systems. For Vitaprotech Group’s perimeter intrusion detection business, TDSi will become the logistics and technical support base in the UK. For TDSi, this merger will allow it to finalise of its new range of GARDiS products including the launch of ‘Access Control as a Service’.
Charity
James Twigg MD of TIS sent me this very sad email. “On May 2 we received the incredibly sad and devastating news that our beloved colleague Lisa Townsend had lost her battle with cancer. The impact of this news to her friends at work was and still is worse than mere words can describe. We had lost our bright, loving, caring, endearingly cheeky Lisa. Losing anyone to cancer is never ever anything but horrendous but what makes it even worse for anyone that knew Lisa is that she was only 25. She had so much of her life to still look forward to if this unspeakably evil disease hadn’t taken her … in loving memory of Lisa we will be changing our charity partners immediately to the Teenage Cancer Trust. This was the choice of Lisa’s closest family and we fully support their wishes.
A dozen from the installer are taking part in the Classic Tough Mudder Challenge, North West to raise money for the Trust, in Cheshire on the weekend of September 7. If you feel you can and want to give then here is the link to their JustGiving page.
