After several months discussing with the various parties involved the first issue of e-Chartam hit the Thames Valley District Society part of icaew.com.

Various District Societies (DS) publish similar newsletters and some are printed and posted and some are available for download on their own areas of icaew.com/regions. The Thames Valley also have a printed magazine that will next hit your post boxes in early May.

The common factor is that all the societies have trouble providing news to all their members. The newsletter was announced in Stoppress as one of the few methods the DS has of telling members it exists. The opening rate on this sign posting news email that started as something akin to e-Chartam is now very low with a subsequent issue on click throughs to the articles. I believe the Institute’s web experts advise that the size and format of Stoppress is the optimum for reader’s opening it.

The Institute has issues with being able to email small PDF’s to their members. The belief is that many members will be unhappy if they received the full PDF in their inbox. In the past I believe this was the case but with the advent of reasonable broadband and the fact that Outlook will now allow you to review a PDF in the preview window I find I am receiving more and more optimised PDF’s in my inbox. The big ones (multi-megabytes) are still links on web sites. I would be interested in your views.

Equally with the advent of the Members Preference Centre I believe the old issue of too much “spam” email from the Institute is now over, perhaps you are still on old affiliate marketing mailing lists but these are easily dealt with as no one wants to upset possible customers and the unsubscribe button will usually work.

Readers and friends will know I have been involved in Institute communications to District Society members for some time and since the demise of the centrally funded printed newsletter (News Review) I have felt that members deserve more information on what is happening locally and would welcome your views as to how you like to receive that information.

I have just read Nigel Hastilows excellent summary on Advantage West Midlands demise and replacement by LEPS (here on ICAEW ION community site)

One thing  that Nigel’s summary shows is that the organisations wanting to create their own LEPs will have their own agendas and they will all have their own physical boundaries.

Being someone who has lived on the edge of the RDA’s since their creation I am now concerned more by the fact that the LEP’s might not reach all the parts they need to and that we will have a new generation of self inflicted “Not Spots” like we do with broadband.

As a member of the Institute’s member communications working group I would welcome your views on the revamped icaew.com website

I believe it looks crisper and fresher, but can you use it better than before?

The problem used to be that there was so much information on there that you couldn’t see the wood for the trees.

Another criticism was about needing to know your ICAEW membership number and password for some pages and not others, has this changed for what you need?

This presentation was rolling whilst the attendees of this year’s agm were networking and enjoying a curry at the award winning curry restaurant at Baylis House, Slough earlier this year.

15^th May 2008

Thames Valley Society of Chartered Accountants
President’s Review of January 2007 – May 2008

Normally our formal financial year would span two presidencies however as I have been your president for two years I thought I would report on the eighteen months since my last report. Our strategies have been nurtured from infancy leading to a higher level of support for members than ever before.

Chartered Accountants in Business

Our CAB group goes from strength to strength, with quarterly meetings with various topics, again we have held some successful soft skills events, hosted by one of our members, Joy Ainley. More recently another of our volunteers, David Harmes put on a successful evening event (“Putting the Numbers Front Seat”). Our next CAB event has just moved from the planning board to the flyer, we are taking over the Oxford Union in June when we have four star speakers for and against the proposition “This House believes Corporate Responsibility will not survive the downturn”, you should find a flyer in the pack, my thanks to Michael Cooper for his efforts in putting this together.

Practice Support Groups

We now have four practice support groups with Newbury successfully joining Oxford, Reading and Thames Valley East, new members are always welcome. During the year, together with the group chairmen I attended two of the three Practice Advisory Group forums where the new group wanted input from the general practitioner, should any of you want to see what Moorgate Place has to offer for the practitioner I highly recommend these events.

Job Club

The job club has not met for some time, with the current “Credit Crunch” we might find it valuable to resurrect it..

Technical Advisory Committee

The TAC is kept busy with monthly meetings reviewing Institute pronouncements.

Continuing Professional development (CPD)

As can be seen in the Treasurer’s report the SESCA managed CPD programme runs from strength to strength, with over a 1,000 course seats in each year.

Annual Dinner

We held a successful annual dinner at the Ashmolean Museum and the Randolph Hotel, where the Randolph surpassed itself with the quality of the local Thames Valley sourced produce.

Annual Conference

The annual conference, held in Stokenchurch, again ran in two streams with delegates mixing between practice and business focused lectures.

New Members Dinner

This year the New Members Dinner will be amalgamated with the Annual Dinner at the Crowne Plaza in Marlow.

This is a presentation I made to the Ordre des experts-comptables in Orléans, summer 2007. I was part of panel that they had put together to discuss doing business with their neighbours, in this case the UK as a precursor to their national conference in September.

Well it’s all over, thank you for the opportunity and your support over the last two years

At last night’s agm Michael mentioned online forums, coming soon, I found this on YouTube:

This clip was recorded from France24′s website:

http://www.france24.com/en/20080326-sarkozy-carla-bruni-france-uk-brown

at the time of President Sarkozy state visit to the UK March 2008

It won’t play here, right click, save and then play using something like Realplayer

Please use the comment link below to add your comments on your likes and dislikes of Thames Valley District Society communications. I am particularly interested in:

• Whether you separate the communications from the TVSCA from that received from the ICAEW
• What you like
• What you hate
• Whether you prefer e-news (email/website)
• Whether you want paper
• What you actually get – brief synopsis