ARCIA update: that's a wrap for 2024

Australian Radio Communications Industry Association

By Hamish Duff, President
Monday, 18 November, 2024

That’s it, 2024 is a wrap as far as ARCIA is concerned — and what a year 2024 has been across the country.

Thank you to all the ARCIA Members and Partners for your support and contributions over the year, with probably the largest attendance ever for major events in Perth, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Melbourne — and I’m sure a record number of Sundowners as well.

A huge shout-out to all the state members that have helped organise these events. We had renewed effort on Sundowners in Melbourne, Sydney and even Newcastle. Not to be outdone, Perth and Brisbane both had very well-supported Sundowners.

For our major events, Paul Davis has put a stellar effort into bringing new, relevant and interesting content to the conferences. It is very important that attendees have a good reason to attend the conferences and it takes a great deal of work to ensure ARCIA gets quality presentations. For the networking dinners, many of you will recognise that we have updated the game for the evening entertainment, as people enjoy networking and a laugh. We can’t be protocols, MHz and standards all the time.

The year culminated with the annual gala dinner, with 515 guests at the Melbourne Convention Centre, and once again it was very well received. Last year ARCIA revamped the awards and for 2024 the association received a total of 40 nominations across all categories. Thank you to everyone for putting in the effort to make this a success; the association really wanted to celebrate small and large businesses, innovation and manufacturing. Our industry needs to recognise the incredible work so many people do around Australia and these awards are a great way to promote what we do to a wider audience. For 2024 we were delighted to have Duncan Swan, COO of British APCO, as the ARCIA guest head judge. Duncan has years of industry experience and he commented on the high quality of the nominations and just what a difficult job it was to find only one winner.

The Melbourne event would not be the same without Comms Connect and the amazing team from Westwick-Farrow; congratulations on another huge event. Bringing together so many people, including overseas guests, makes the annual week in Melbourne very enjoyable.

The work of the executive is never done, and we have finished off the year with visits to the National Emergency Management Agency in Canberra, representation at ACMA’s RadComms, and also the Australian Control Room Network Association’s annual conference.

The 2025 calendar is already taking shape and will be published by the end of 2024 so we can all start saving dates.

We wish everyone a happy and safe festive season.