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From the editor's desk: Social beings

Andrew Seldon, Editor

Welcome to Hi-Tech Security Solutions Issue 7. We have slightly fewer topics in focus in this issue because the bulk of the editorial covers one topic, the Residential Estate Security Conference 2022. The conference was held on 18 October in Fourways, Johannesburg, and it proved just the ticket for locked-up people.

It turns out that humans are social beings and we were wonderfully surprised when we filled every seat available in the conference centre. While lockdowns and masks have been quickly and happily forgotten, this was the first conference Hi-Tech Security Solutions has held in a long time where there were no masks, no COVID protocols and nobody running around with hand sanitiser. It seems people just enjoyed being able to get together and interact normally.

Of course, the presentations were well prepared and presented, and we have a brief summary of them later in the publication (or at a link near you if you’re reading this online – try www.securitysa.com/17836r). Sadly, despite the space the conference review takes up, we could only get the basics of what the presenters delivered down on paper, but there were a few interesting surprises along the way. There were also some interesting prizes up for grabs just before the lunch break.

Due to my waffling, the presentations are not in the same order in the article that they were on the day. Our production team had to juggle things around and throw in a few images to make everything fit nicely and look good. However, I think I captured the gist of each presentation and they definitely pulled it together very well.

We had a full house of sponsors at the event as well. For the first time I can recall we had to turn some potential sponsors away because there was no space for them. To give credit where it’s due, we asked the sponsors to provide us with a short half-page of information about their offerings post-event, which is printed after the review.

Hi-Tech Security Solutions thanks all the delegates for attending and for their questions after the presentations. We are also grateful to our sponsors (Allbro, Arteco Global, Elvey Group, IDEMIA, Impro Technologies, MiRO, Nemtek, Nice SA, Optex and Stafix Security Centres) for the time and effort they put into their displays and for being ‘on duty’ the whole day. Our speakers also deserve a medal for their work and delivery – despite the technology failures carefully calculated to happen at the worst time.

And my personal thanks goes to the Hi-Tech Security Solutions team who seem to pull rabbits out of thin air these days (because I lost the hat). The Residential Estate Security Conference will be venturing into the wilds of KZN early next year with an eye on the Cape Winelands (or according to our directors, Cape Town) soon thereafter. We hope to see you there.

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