The Chairman's Column.

Most readers by now know that I am the society's chairman again this year. How I got back into the hot seat is anyone's guess. Years back, society was run on a more formal basis. Today one has to rely on the goodwill of the volunteer staff who make up the committee. Please never underestimate the enormous effort that they put in to keep the wheels turning.

As chairman, both now as it was in the past, my ambition is two-fold: to maintain good governance and to satisfy the needs of the membership base. Good governance is easy to achieve, it requires good discipline, a little vision, and a tight rein on the budget. To satisfy the needs of the membership base is far more difficult.

Societies like ours compete with the Internet. One can research and obtain information far more readily on the Internet than one can at any of the society's meetings. How then do we compete against the likes of the Internet? Well, quite frankly, we cannot. No matter how hard we try to communicate through our publication Canopus, we can never do as well as publications like Sky and Telescope.

I suppose the only way we can excel, is to provide a forum where members can meet with each other to discuss matters of common interest. We can also arrange special outings to wonderful places like HartRAO, the impact crater north of Pretoria, the gamma-ray observatory near Potchefstroom and the Planetarium. These are some things we have on the agenda for the remainder of this financial year.

Sadly, our society's membership has been dwindling over the last few years. It is my heartfelt belief that if we focus our attention properly, we will slowly be able to turn this trend around. Please feel free to share your thoughts and ideas about a society with me at any time. I look forward to meeting you in person and I hope that you will be both proud of the society and find your membership entertaining informative and enjoyable.

Tom Budge