Nigel

many thanks for the introduction and the best wishes. I would just like to
take the opportunity to say thank you Nigel for your work and efforts as
Convenor.

For those of you that do not know me I am the SMR Officer for The National
Trust. I have been working in the Hertage Information profession for over 8
years, I did my degree at Bradford University taking the Archaeology course
and left with a Bsc Hons 2/1.

Anyway enough about me ...

On 16 May 2003 i met with Edmund Lee (FISH co-ordinator) and have been
talking to Nigel Pratt (previous FISH convenor) to hand over.

As you are all probably aware Edmund Lee has been asking if anyone would
like to take over as FISH co-ordinator for about a year. He wants to
concentrate on getting MIDAS 2 and improving INSCRIPTION which i think all
of us can support.

So as no one has come forward and on the grounds that it would free Ed's
time  ... I agreed to roll together the FISH Convenor and FISH co-ordinator
posts. Effectively this does not mean a great deal Ed Lee is still an
attending member of the Forum and will attend meetings. I would think he is
likely to be very active on developing MIDAS 2 and helping with development
of INSCRIPTION. Also as the moderator for the FISH IT TECHNICAL AND SERVICE
PROVIDERS Smartgroups list he will no doubt be active there.

What has changed is that i will act as Ed Lee once did in terms of the
JISCMAIL list and the forum.

So the sort of things i will be doing are

As Co-ordinator
Manage the FISH JISC Mail List
Encourage list users to take part in the list
Help to organise meetings (with the Forum Convenor and the meeting host)
Maintain Membership lists
Maintain the INSCRIPTION website

As Convenor
Call Agenda items
Call the meetings
Help to organise meetings (with the Forum Co-ordinator and the meeting
host)
Invite new members to the Forum

So from the above you can see that there is some overlap in the two
roles ... and if it will free Ed up to get MIDAS 2 rolling then this makes
some sense.

Effectively i am here to help you the Forum members so if you have any
problems (i.e. e-mails not getting through etc) just contact me as you did
Ed.

As for the list this is an open Forum so please feel free to use the list
in terms of the Forum's remit. We have some interesting topics and issues
ahead of us and MIDAS 2 is looming the last meeting saw an agreement that
MIDAS 2 must go ahead in the next year. This means we are likely to see
issues and items raised in preparation for that so, some interesting
debates are no doubt going to begin in the coming months.

if you have any questions, comments etc please post on the forum so
everyone can see them

Many thanks
Jason A. Siddall
FISH Convenor