Title: View from the (Acting) Chair

Author: Martin Moene

Date: 01 July 2016 21:00:08 +01:00 or Fri, 01 July 2016 21:00:08 +01:00

Summary: 

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Bob Schmidt
chair@accu.org

Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Bob Schmidt, and I have volunteered to be the ACCU Chair for the 2016–2017 term. I am based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, making me the first non-UK based Chair of the organization (but please don’t hold that against me). I am president of Sandia Control Systems, Inc. and have been a consultant and contractor since 1994. I am a licensed Professional Engineer in the U.S. state of Texas. I’ve been a member of ACCU since 2011.

Currently I’m acting chair – I decided to volunteer after the AGM in April, when the position remained vacant. I wanted to ask a past holder of the position about the duties and time commitment before volunteering, and I wasn’t able to do that until after the meeting. I’d like to express my personal thanks to past Chairs Ewan Milne and Alan Griffiths for answering my questions about the role. They were instrumental in helping me decide to volunteer.

Anna-Jayne Metcalfe presented a thought-provoking keynote on Comfort Zones, shortly after I volunteered. As she was talking about stepping outside of one’s comfort zone, I thought to myself that I hadn’t so much stepped out of mine, but rather had jumped from a fourth floor without benefit of a net. I spent a considerable amount of time that evening trying to get my logical brain to convince my lizard brain I had done the right thing. (My wife just laughed when I told her.)

My main goal for ACCU in the coming year is to keep the organization ticking along. Based on what I heard during the AGM and the following ACCU conference session, we have just one pressing issue – our web site and web hosting. Tim Pushman, who has been hosting the web site for a number of years, had informed the committee he was no longer able to continue in the role. Our immediate need is to find a new hosting platform, probably one that will allow us to run the existing platform. Our longer term need is to replace that older platform with a current one. That platform will need to support the existing site functionality.

By the time this gets published we should have a new host platform, and hopefully our existing software will be transferred to it. We are still looking for one or more volunteers who would like to help upgrade our platforms and improve the site. This will not be a long-term commitment. If you are interested please let me know.

ACCU will need an additional auditor for 2017, as I will be unable to continue in that role. (Auditors are independent of the committee.) The role of auditor is not an onerous one, requiring only a few hours of effort in the month prior to the AGM. Qualifications include being able to balance a cheque-book and a minimum familiarity with Microsoft Excel. Rob Pauer, our treasurer, was very helpful answering the questions I had this year. Guy Davidson is starting his two year term as auditor. If you are willing to join Guy and accept the role for the one year remaining on my term, please send me an email.

The 2016 ACCU Conference was a great success, and a tribute to the hard work of our Conference Chair, Russell Winder. It was a shame that Russell was unable to attend in person to see the fruits of his labour, but I’m told he was following some of the sessions as they were posted on YouTube. Russell is continuing in the role as Conference Chair for 2017. Please join me in thanking Russell for a job well done, and wishing him a continued and speedy recovery. Thanks also to Jon Jagger for stepping in as master of ceremonies.

During the ACCU conference session we heard reports from Fran Buontempo and Steve Love on the challenges they face as editors of Overload and C Vu (respectively). Their main concern is a lack of a backlog of articles waiting to be published. I’m sure you have seen their requests for material on the accu-general mailing list. Currently they are operating in ‘just-in-time’ mode, and are considering reprinting articles to help with content.

I had not worked with Steve prior to this report, but I have written several articles for Fran. Overload is a peer-reviewed journal; I can tell you from experience that Fran and her fine group of reviewers are excellent at bringing out the best in you and your material. It may not be true that everyone has a book in them (and if so it should probably stay there), but we all have something to share. Please consider working with Steve or Fran and sharing your experiences and expertise with all of us.

One of the action items I inherited with the position is to develop a Diversity Statement for the organization. I have a draft that I have shared with the committee, whose consensus was that we need more input from a more diverse group of members. If you have strong feelings about what a diversity statement should say (or not say), please contact me and I will add you to our (hopefully) growing list of participants in the process.

As I stated in the opening paragraph, currently I’m just the acting chair. In addition, Malcolm Noyes also volunteered to stay in the role of Secretary after the AGM. We need to hold a special general meeting in order to vote on Malcolm’s and my formal nominations for these roles. Due to the steps and timeline required by the constitution the vote probably will be held sometime in September. Watch this space and accu-general for more information as it becomes available.

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