AGM 2013 Great hopes and a spirit of a new beginning for PAM-Lingua accompanied this year's AGM. Would it be the end of a period of insecurity and non-activity?
Picking it up where we left off
reported by Michael Möbius
May 18th saw our AGM of the year 2013. It wasn't the perfect day because Whitsun was around and many took a long weekend, or something. In that style the apologies might have sounded if they only had arrived. OK, we had a major set-back with our RSVP address, which didn't work. I wonder how many members tried it. I personally know of two. To make it short, the usual crowd, i. e. the board, showed up for the official AGM part. We were later strengthened by two or three members, associated, former and so on. We still have to work on the turnout, obviously.
Anyway, we had our AGM, the first one since 2011, the minutes of which will be uploaded to the members group on Yahoo later this spring, after they have been confirmed and properly written. So, you might want to go there and sign up if you aren't a member yet. There is no way that we publish the minutes on our Facebook site. The AGM was followed as planned by a get-together at which Paul Whybrow and Michael Möbius presented English and German beer varieties and there was, of course, a beer tasting.
Here is a short report on what actually happened at the AGM. There is a predefined agenda according to which we proceeded. This includes the accounts, found to be in order and the board of 2011/2012 was relieved of that burden nem. con. Activities during this period were a bit scarce due to some frustration issues among some board members. There was, however, the solving of an issue at Berlitz, in which board members Daryl Taylor and John Sigona had a part. Both were satisfied with the outcome.
Another important part was the election of the new board. This was especially so because the section did not have a Chairman of the Board for two years. Paul Allison was the highest ranking board member in his capacity as Vice-Chairman. The present board members were willing to continue and this is how it came out:
The PAM-Lingua Board of 2013/14
Michael Möbius - Chairman of the Board
Mail: michi(a)dlc.fi
Paul Allison - Vice Chairman of the Board
Mail: paul.allison(a)interpress.fi
Daryl Taylor - treasurer / Liaison with PAM
Mail: employee(a)welho.com
Paul Whybrow - member
Mail: p.a.whybrow(a)gmail.com
John Sigona - member
Mail: jadqs(a)yahoo.com
Juan-Luis Moreno - member, Liaison to the French and Spanish speaking membership
Mail: jmoreno(a)welho.com
The goal of the newly elected board is to bring our members closer together once again. We will arrange workshops, training and social events on a more regular basis. In an attempt to make this easier we changed the web site address to www.pam-lingua.org. That looks a bit more associable with a union, rather than the obviously cheap-level-domain .tk (with is Tokelau btw.) We also opened a Facebook group as mentioned above and we also would like to keep the Yahoo group (also mentioned above) for discrete file sharing and messaging. The use of these is, of course, at your own discretion but we recommend checking in on all three channels to find out what we are planning for you, what's up with employers and what is happening in the industry.
At about 15.30 the fading AGM went seamlessly over to the spring get-together to which a few more members arrived. Paul Whybrow had agreed to do parts of his Beer Essentials presentation again, bringing new beer varieties this time: Finnish-made variations of old English beer themes - rather interesting what Finns do with the traditional English ale culture. Intense colours, strong flavours and high alcohol contents made it difficult to say what the best one or the most liked one was. Michael Möbius took it upon himself to continue with German beers. He had brought a whole lot of beer to taste. The pace of going through all the beer types and the characteristics as well as the continuous tasting led to some discipline issues among the crowd, in particular the on-going fighting, correcting, disagreeing between the two presenters. OK, at least in one point there was an agreement: the favourite beer, which comes from Bamberg, Germany and is called "Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier" - a smoke beer you find in Alko stores across Finnland. If you don't have access to a Finnish smoke sauna, enjoying this beer after your electrically heated sauna will give you the impression of having been to a smoke sauna.
In all, a well done party which didn't end in disaster but everybody had a good time. And everybody learned something new about English beer again, and the Finnish copies of them. As we know, after the party is before the party and we are looking for theme ideas for the autumn party 2013. Don't hesitate to post them on Facebook or by e-mail.
Now all there is to hope for is a better turnout at the future gatherings. Remember this: We do it all for you, our members. We at the board invest some time in all that and we would certainly appreciate the membership participating a bit more.
Hope to see you the next time!
Michael Möbius
Chairman of the Board