Online at last!

Apologies for the delay but in my defence, I can assure you I haven’t been idle since March. I said in the April newsletter that Jim’s fantastic stint in the chair would be a tough act to follow. Eight weeks in, I can assure you I wasn’t wrong!

But I’m really looking forward to the challenges ahead and I’m confident the branch will go from strength to strength over the coming months.

The branch committee has already discussed a number of important initiatives that we’re hoping to put in place. These include:

 Improving our already pretty damn good communications strategy, by trying to better integrate the branch website, newsletter and grapevine service. Jim Pollard, who is now Vice Chair, is in charge of this project, so you can be sure that there will be some impressive results.

 Developing our welfare and outreach services, particularly for members living outside of Paris. Welfare officer Barabra Casassus is co-ordinating this work. In June she’ll be attending a welfare officers’ event at head office in London, which should provide some useful input into this project.

 Working on new ideas and strategies for ensuring we recruit even more members - there are already nearly 300 of us. Recruitment and retention officer Jeff Apter is on the case here.

We also have a midsummer dinner planned for June 29, which I hope as many as possible of you will be able to come to. Thanks again to Barbara for organising this.

As I said in the newsletter, I am incredibly lucky to have such an experienced and dedicated committee working with me this year.

I don’t have the space to name everyone now, but I can’t stress enough how important my colleagues on the committee will be to me.

Even if I weren’t someone who naturally believes in delegating, I would have to rely heavily on the committee for practical reasons: I have a family with two young children, who take priority over everything else in my life, including the NUJ. I live over 300 kilometres from Paris and I have a job that regularly sends me scurrying off to far-flung corners of Europe.

So over the coming year your branch will be run by a team of activists. My job will be to try to play a co-ordinating role. They’ll be great. The jury’s out on how I’ll measure up. But the committee isn’t the be all and end all of Paris branch.

What we’re really about is nearly 300 branch members working together to help and support each other. I really want about any thoughts you may have to make the best branch in the NUJ even better.

If you have any ideas for speakers at meetings, events like last year’s great Nick Davies talk, new venues for get-togethers or anything else please let me, or any of the committee members, know. I’m particularly keen to push forward with the work Jim began on trying to attract younger members to the branch.

I think the recruitment evening we held last May at ’Les Fontaines’ is certainly a formula we should try again. (Mind you, I thought the NUJ house band’s guitarist looked a bit dodgy).

I’d also like to know if any of you think we can improve the way branch meetings are run. This is an issue that was touched on in the recent branch survey. Are meetings too long or too short? Is there too much internal NUJ technical stuff or not enough? Does the debating and discussion style get you fired up or put you off?

Your thoughts and ideas on these kinds of questions and any other thoughts you may have are vital, so please keep them coming in. It’s your branch.

Thanks again for giving me this honour. I’ll try not to let you down.