Neil Lasher, the managing director of Trainer1, has been elected to the post of president of the UK chapter of the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD)'s Global Network for 2006.

He sees his main challenge as president as creating bonds between the ASTD and other training representative bodies in the UK.

"As the ASTD's UK chapter president in 2006, my intention is to forge much stronger links between the ASTD and the British Learning Association (BLA) and the eLearning Network (ELN)," Lasher said. "The memberships of these organisations need to have a greater awareness of the ASTD, its values and aims, as well as the benefits of cross-membership in all these organisations."

Lasher is to begin his presidency by joining a panel at the Learning Technologies conference, in Olympia, London, on 25th/26th January, to debate 'what skill does the ideal learning and development manager need?'

The ASTD's UK chapter is also planning its own conference to take place on 14-15 March at Cambridge University.