40 C O N T E X T 1 3 7 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 4 Director’s cut Engines are go As I start writing this, we have just concluded our Membership Application Day in Derby – very successfully, and with more than 80 delegates giving up their working day to find out more about IHBC membership opportunities and processes, whether as affiliate, new applicant or as adviser to applicants. We have also just announced that our LETS (learning, education, training and standards) liaison officer, Kate Kendall, has started in her new role as support officer for our branches and other volunteers; and that Alison McCandlish, our new social media guru, has just finished her ‘storify’ of the Derby day. This has created an unexpectedly elegant and, as ever, accessible digital statement that offers a rare insight into the myriad resources we have to support our multidisciplinary membership interests. It is itself just part of Alison’s wider work for us, as she is also our official NewsBlog author. Together these have helped lift our online profile so that now our digital network is more than 8,000 across the LinkedIn landscape and Twittersphere alone. To add a little piquancy to that exciting mix, I have had to miss an internal meeting in London to take up an externally funded place at a conference inWashington on heritage issues for digital recording. This was hosted by CyArk, a recording and archiving initiative based in the USA but with a decidedly global remit. I have also planned a ‘re-hashing’ of our initiative on training volunteer, thirdparty planning interests, to present to an ICOMOS conference next year. That programme may be taken up as a pilot in Scotland.With our president I will be attending our nationally-funded branch support event in Belfast in the coming weeks, as we help reinvigorate our branch there in a networking gala led by our local volunteers in partnership with Kate Kendall. Almost a perfect circle! That is before we get down to the matter of formally launching our associate membership category, an initiative that represents the most substantial change in our accreditation since the IHBC was established as a professional body, or developing support for the online publication of our remarkable legacy of Gus Astley Student Award submissions (perhaps in itself the most emphatic statement of the UK’s global renown in conservation). As another mark of the IHBC’s everexpanding recognition and credentials, the renowned international authority on conservation practice and its history, Jukka Jokilehto, will serve as judge for the current (2014) student awards, having been introduced to that work as a speaker at our annual school in Edinburgh this year. At the same time our continuing role as leading advocates of conservation skills and principles is continuing apace, from meetings with the Treasury
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