Talk title: Welcome to Conference
Speaker: Vince Arnold, CIBSE
Event: CIBSE Scotland Conference 2026: Heating the Future, 27 May 2026
Video: https://youtu.be/KnALLOM0Nzg

[00:00] A very warm welcome to quite a few people. It's really good to see you here at the conference. The warm welcome was welcomed by the climate change as well. It's been occurring in the last few days, as you know. I live near Brighton, so I sort of left it behind, if you like. I'm really looking forward to the agenda. The agenda looks really interesting, a lot of fun, and I hope we have a great day.

[00:30] My presidential theme this year is focusing on the members paying it forward, because that's what we do as volunteers and members of CIBSE. We get involved in teaching, mentoring, developing people, and sharing knowledge. And I think this conference today supports all those four aspects of my theme. So thank you to the team here, the committee. They've done a great job in supporting my theme.

[01:00] Thank you particularly to Damien, your regional chair, Sarah, the vice chair, Steven, who's done a lot of emailing and certainly been emailing me, been very busy in organising the event. And it goes without saying, and it will say it up there, I'm told, thank you to the sponsors. That is not a cliche or a phrase that's overused. I mean that personally.

[01:25] We couldn't do any of this without our sponsors. A big thank you to them. Do take every opportunity to ask questions, to share knowledge and experience, particularly during the networking. And networking is fun. I've done that a lot this year. You'd learn an awful lot by networking. So if you see somebody standing around when we've got a breakout session or a break, it's probably a good idea to come speak to them, because we learn something. And I think there's this another cliche, isn't there?

[01:58] Every day is a school day. We learn something new every day. It's certainly why I, a few years ago now, went into engineering, because there's a challenge every day. And I think this conference is going to bring up a lot of challenges today. So enjoy the conference. Have a great day. I look forward to sharing that with you today.