Dear BPV members, sponsors and friends, This year there are some big changes in the BPV board, three of our longstanding members have left and three new members have come in.  Many thanks to Mike Corder, Jan Hennop and Douglas Heingartner for the time and effort they have put into the BPV over the years. The new board is committed to keeping up the good work and giving it a new twist. The presidency is slightly changed this year as we have decided to approach it more as a shared job between myself and my vice-president Britta so we can give the BPV the time and attention it deserves. In this time of ‘fake news’ and general distrust towards the media it is important for the BPV as a professional organization  to supports its members. If you have trouble with authorities, accreditation and access to events in the line of your work: let us know so we can try to help. This year we hope to organize more lunches and events with newsmakers for our members. We also ask you, our members and friends to think of events they would like to see organized or people they would want to meet. We are continuing our strategy to be more visible and engaged on social media via our Twitter and Facebook accounts. We try to use Twitter as a way to alert members to interesting facts and upcoming events both from the BPV and others. For Facebook we have decided to use that more as a showcase for our members and link to articles or items they have produced.  We are also looking into giving the yearbook a new life online. We hope that we will all have a productive year and keep inspiring each other Stephanie van den Berg and Britta Behrendt