Friday, January 2, 2009

ISA HK/China --- CSGF 2008 report
















*** Our weekly Station Mail is for the information of Station Members only, but Station Mail has given up copyright & can be freely circulated. For administrative reasons, comments from outsiders are usually not entertained & may be circulated within our system locally & overseas. Please note Station Mail is sometimes given in Blog at http://isahkchina.blogspot.com , although images are usually not attached due to size. ***

Dear Station Members,

It is a genuine pleasure to write up this report of our attendance at the China Southern Green Fair (CSGF) during the Christmas period with the +10 no. Deputy Station Managers & Station Members indeed. In fact, we have enjoyed it so much that it was both fun & honour to be there.

To start with, the organizers have given us all the protocols that we deserved. We were provided with free hotel & meals all the way. Beyond that we were given a 40 seater coach just to sit the 10 no. of us travelling with a personal escort from the Town Govt. The display booth at the Show was given to us for free & was even decorated under our instruction with the organizer's manpower ! Where on earth would we get such a VIP reception & it was all given in the honour & respect of the largest & most historical arboricultural organization of the world with 84 years of running history, with + 22,000 members spreading across 47 countries, & with a true international standing in research & development in Tree Care, the one & only ISA.

At the technical seminar, the Station Manager (SM) was sitting on the same platform with professors & researchers from various Guangdong Provincial Institutes. At the time when the SM started talking, the +200 audiences paid complete attention to his delivery of knowledge that they have found useful & practical. Any cell phone ringing would be immediately turned off so that the phone owner could carry on listening. No one wondered off to toilet for a smoke like with the other speakers, & the whole room was silent & focused. One could hear a pin dropping besides the voice of the SM talking like a powerful reverend. The thundering applause at the end was long awaited & lasting. We would genuinely love to do the same in HK.

If we could say the IPM Show was attended by dozens of thousands of visitors, the CSGF Show was enthusiastically visited by the hundreds of thousands. Check out the photos for the 'People Mountain, People Sea'. The population mass of the Land of Old Dragons was truly compressing. The organizers have stood out the Tree Climbing & Tree Rigging for us as part of the Show attraction & vigorously advertised them in media announcement. The SM was also interviewed by 3 Provincial TV & 2 local TV stations. He has lost count on the newspaper reporter interviews with so many local & national presses.

The anticipated success at the CSGF with hardly any financial contribution from ISA HK/China is attributed to the respect for ISA by the organizers, & to the genuine contribution of our Deputy Station Mangers & attending Station Members, who all actually had a good time there unexpectedly. The name of ISA has now officially been stamped into China on a national scale, & will be watched by traditional interest parties. ISA HK/China will maintain course into this uncharted waters with respect & caution, lavishly expanding & sharing ISA skills & knowledge to our brothers & sisters without asking for any material return. We shall devote ourselves to win their hearts & minds with ISA morals & education. We are going to bring China into the ISA global family gradually.

ISA HK/China now anticipates invitation or further seminars & discussions from our Chinese brothers & sisters in time to come. We have made a good start into China & must maintain steam.

'How the East is Won' is our target & we shall work hard on it.

best regards,

Sammy Au
Station Manager

"Trees are good for the community. Trees need care like human beings. Arborists are the Tree Care Professionals."