Compliments of the season to you all.  I trust you have survived another silly season, and by now you are probably back in the swing of things and looking forward to the year ahead.  That's where I find myself and so I thought I would share my wish list with you concerning some of the bigger SAIMechE issues which I hope will see some action in 2012.

At the top of my wish list is to see more SAIMechE members using the SAIMechE web platform for their own benefit.  I hope to see members finding employment through the site's career section, and for other members to earn placement and referral fees.  I hope to see members selling their intellectual property through the site, in electronic formats such as PDFs, spreadsheets, videos, audio files.  I hope to see members launching successful newsletters for paying subscribers.  All these good things are available to all members at no charge - just some effort on their part.

I hope SAIMechE will launch the Professional Development Programme (PDP) in 2012, aimed at providing a structured framework within which Candidates can develop towards professional registration.

I wish for some meaningful progress in the identification of engineering work, and that those who have been trying to get this issue resolved for the past decade will step aside and make way for others to have a try.

Finally, I wish for a significant South African company to become the Patron of SAIMechE, and to support our efforts at developing the Mechanical Engineering profession in South Africa.

Oh yes, I am also wishing for a 4-week surfing holiday in Hawaii.

Until then, it's shoulder to the wheel.  Have fun.