I am sitting here a bit bleary eyed after presenting the Women in Security (WiS) awards last night, and what a great night it was especially if you were one of the finalists.
This year we were back on the boat, cruising up the Thames and having dinner. The band played quietly in the background as the tension built for the presentations. The winners were (please provide your own drum roll) Michelle Bailey from Active Response; Samantha Bamford from Pelco; Siobhan Plunkett from GSLS; and Keeley Watson from Wilson James.
Una Riley has written all about the night in her column [October 2017 print magazine] so I don’t want to steal any of her thunder but would like to thank the National Security Inspectorate for hosting a fantastic evening; and the sponsors (Sodexo and UBM-Ifsec besides the NSI) for making it all possible, the judges for their time to judge. My team, Liz Lloyd and Una and for everyone that took the time to nominate someone. We had over 150 excellent nominations which makes all of you winners in my book.
Congratulations to each and everyone of you. It was a nice evening weather-wise as well, but where did the summer go? Not to Glasgow for sure because when I arrived there for our first ST event north of the border, it was raining, but that did not dampen the event at all, in fact it was great event so thank you to everyone that braved the wet and came and visited us.
The night before of course we had our usual charity night where we raise funds for an industry-related charity and this was the first opportunity we had to raise money in the name of Mike Tennent. As you will know Mike sadly left us earlier this year but during his years while he was ill he started working with the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation. You may recall that Mike was a very keen photographer so he took some of his pictures and made greeting cards with them, the money he raised from these he gave to the Foundation and that was quite a lot, £1800 actually. At his funeral the collection raised there another £2500, also for the foundation; and we raised a further £2050 on the night of the dinner thanks to the raffle and heads and tails game. I was also really pleased that Mike’s sons Phil and Paul could join me in Glasgow to receive the cheque on behalf of dad. Now I know Mike would have been proud and pleased with that result, so thank you all for your donations of either prizes, your money or in some cases both. So where next; of course we will be in the Park Inn at Heathrow on Thursday, November 2, so do come along and join us. We have also launched now our dates for 2018 so drop on our website to see where we are off to or turn to the inside back cover where they are also displayed.
Let us get on with the gossip; and were you aware that Dan Bishop the Stephen Gerrard look-a-like has moved to IC Realtime. He will be running the UK operation to replace John Gibson who moved back to ADT as Sales Director for Ireland! So what can I tell you about Dan, he is a keen footballer, I suppose that was a given due to his celebrity likeness; but he got injured one too many times so had to throw in the towel, not that it has stopped him as he now coaches children at football. He has 17 years of industry experience under his belt so we wish him well with his new position.
I am also aware that Kath Rhodes has joined Inner Range as the regional sales manager for the north. Now Kath used to work with me, many years ago, at the distributors MVD in Rochdale, she was in fact in charge of the office. I did poach her from Baxall where we first met and blimey I am going back some years now. She left MVD and went out in the field to work with Europlex where she has not looked back, so yep some names from the past. Found this picture of Kath in my files not sure when it was taken but I am sure she hasn’t changed much.
Simone Oxford has joined the sales team at Stentofon the ‘market leader in IP intercom and PA’ etc as described by Stephen King.
Luke Turton has joined Bold Communications as Security Systems Specialist. Luke worked in systems and product roles previously at Coopers and Pyronix.
Ashley Wyton has joined Honeywell Security as systems sales manager for UK and Ireland and talking of Honeywell, they have announced, Richard (Rich) Lattanzi as the president of Honeywell’s global security business and Dino Koutrouki as the president of Honeywell’s global fire business. In their new leadership roles, Lattanzi and Koutrouki will drive greater customer focus, I am told. Both will continue to report to Michael Flink, president of Honeywell Security and Fire.
And distributors DVS have a new starter in technical support, Michael Sullivan (pictured). He was previously a freelance CCTV installation engineer and had worked for Gratte Brothers.
