Welcome to the first blog of the year and Happy New Year to you all. Hopefully you all had a good break over Christmas and managed to spend some quality time with family and friends.

The year ended on a highlight for me when I was invited to speak at the Rising Generation Group's first event entitled RPA 2000: Putting together your first portfolio". I was there at the formation of the group and it was good to see how some of the first ideas have come to fruition. You will have no doubt read in the newsletter that the event was originally planned for around 40 people and ended up attracting nearly twice that number, which meant moving to a larger venue. The programme was well constructed and I heard nothing but praise from the people I spoke to. It is also encouraging to see that there appears to be a substantial new generation of RPAs coming up for the future.

In previous blogs I have mentioned the work of the Council and sub-committees. At times it can be hard work but people also seem to get an enormous benefit from being part of them and meetings often tend to be very enjoyable. It really is an opportunity to get involved in the work of the Society but as well as that it enables you to get to know fellow radiation protection specialists in varied nuclear fields, which can only be good for careers. You will see from the newsletter that we are inviting nominations for various posts to the council namely two Members, Honorary Secretary and President Elect. I know many people are reluctant to put themselves forward for fear that they are not the right sort of candidate and therefore wait to be asked. However I would strongly encourage you to really consider these positions and put yourself forward; you would be very welcome.

January looks to be a busy month with a number of meetings coming up. We are about half way through our strategic plan and although the first couple of years were reasonably well mapped out we feel it is worth reviewing the strategy to ensure that some of the longer term aims remain relevant and correctly focused. We will be doing this at a gathering in Birmingham towards the end of the month and I look forward to reporting back to you at a later date.

That's it for now; have a good month and I will write again in February.

Richard I Wilkins