Title: View from the Chair

Author: Martin Moene

Date: 01 March 2017 18:33:14 +00:00 or Wed, 01 March 2017 18:33:14 +00:00

Summary: Bob Schmidt
chair@accu.org

Body: 

In my last column I mentioned that I was scheduled to participate in the Hour of Code program. Hour of Code is a “global movement reaching tens of millions of students in 180+ countries” [1] sponsored by code.org, a “non-profit dedicated to expanding access to computer science, and increasing participation by women and under-represented minorities.” [2]

I volunteered for Hour of Code in 2015, but was not contacted to participate that year. Last year, Dr. Kathleen Neuber of St. Charles School here in Albuquerque asked if I would come to her school and talk to her students.

I spent two hours the morning of December 5th at the school, interacting with approximately 50 students ranging in age from ten to 13 years. As I worked my way through the slides I had prepared, I talked about how I had never seen a computer until I was 18 years old and in my second college semester, and how that compares to today’s students who grow up with a computer in their hands.

I explained that the type of systems on which I work, from large-scale process control systems to very-small-scale embedded systems, are somewhat different from the type of applications they are used to using on their phones and tablets. I gave a brief introduction to closed-loop control, using a heating thermostat as a simple example.

I spent a little time talking directly to the young ladies in the audience. I explained that women are under-represented in our field, and that there are several reasons why – including peer pressure and bullying. I encouraged the young ladies, if they are interested in a career in one of computer industries, to push back against those pressures. I explained that diverse project teams have been shown to be more successful than those that aren’t. I showed a picture of a computer system I helped develop, install, and maintain starting in 1981, and which ran until it was replaced in 2013. In the foreground of the picture was a young lady who was at the time younger than the computer system. I explained that she was the software project lead on that system’s replacement project, and was supervising my work as part of my current contract.

I also brought samples of some of the embedded system products I’ve produced over the past 20 years, including prototypes and production runs of the printed circuit boards (PCBs), and the schematics that were used to generate the PCB layouts. I had some spare boards that the kids could pass around so they could get an up-close look.

We talked about areas of computing that I’ve seen in the literature – including Big Data – that are predicted to be high growth areas (and used pictures of the Large Hadron Collider as an example, generating a petabyte of data per year when it is running).

The older students are participating in the Future City competition [3], so I talked a bit about where computer systems might be applied in cities the future. I also opined that we aren’t very good at predicting the future, and used as an example that when I wrote my first program in 1978 (in FORTRAN, for an IBM 360), nobody (that I knew of, at least) was predicting we’d all be carrying around computers in our pockets.

I was worried I was going to blow through the slides, but I ended up talking for longer than I expected. When it came time for questions, most of the students were quiet, but there was one young lady who asked multiple questions. She stayed behind after the rest of the students had gone back to their regularly scheduled classes, and we talked one-on-one for a short time. I gave her one of the sample boards that had been passed around.

Why spend so much ink on this? Not long ago, Russel Winder (our conference chair) asked what we (ACCU) could do to support computing in schools, and we discussed the issue in our January committee meeting. The answer to the question is, as an organization, ‘not much’, because ACCU as an organization does not have a lot of unallocated resources; however, as a collection of professionals, we are rich in individual resources, and we each have the potential to contribute.

One thing ACCU has done is to adopt Code Club [4] as one of our charities, and we anticipate they will have a presence at the conference this year. Several of our members are active with the group. Russel mentioned Computing at School, another organization “promoting and supporting excellence in computer science education”.[5] Hour of Code is another option. I encourage you to consider participating in one of these fine programs, and if you do, consider writing up your experience and share it with the rest of us. If I can do it, so can you.

Member news

We are starting a new section in CVu this issue – Member News. This is an opportunity for our members to let us know what’s happening in their professional lives. This is a work-in-progress, but the general rules are as follows:

• The section is available to members only;
• News should be of a professional nature: new jobs, promotions, completion of major projects, release of a product from a company owned by the member, etc.;
• The news should be member-oriented, not company-oriented;
• The editor of CVu has the final say over what is published, and may edit submissions for length and content.

Pavol Rovensky (Devon, UK) has released version 1.0 of ProudNumbers, through the company he founded, Hexner Limited. ProudNumbers is a management account report generator for Sage 50 accounting software. The program is designed to generate Management Account reports for various time periods and enables full customisation of the chart of accounts for reporting purposes. The reports are generated in seconds. The generated output is in spreadsheet or PDF format and facilitates communication between accountants and their clients. Pavol spent more than 5 years developing ProudNumbers. He has been a member of ACCU since 2007. (www.hexner.co.uk)

ACCU Conference 2017

The 2017 ACCU conference is scheduled for Wednesday, April 26th through Saturday, April 29th, with pre-conference tutorials on Tuesday the 25th [6]. The schedule for the conference has been announced, and is available on our website [7].

Election of officers

The ACCU Annual General Meeting will be held in conjunction with the conference, on Saturday April 29th. These are the important dates associated with the election:

Announcement	29 January, 2017	(90 days before AGM)
Proposal deadline	28 February, 2017	(60 days before AGM)
Draft agenda	18 March, 2017	(42 days before AGM)
Agenda freeze	1 April, 2017	(28 days before AGM)
Voting opens	8 April, 2017	(21 days before AGM)

We will once again be utilizing on-line voting for the election. Details will be posted to accu-members and accu-announce.

Independent-of-the-committee spotlight

Those of you who have been keeping score know that, for the past 8 months, I have been asking for a volunteer to take my place as Auditor for the second year of my term. I’m pleased to announce that Niall Douglas has volunteered for the role. Niall has impeccable qualifications for the role, with an education and business experience in accounting. Please join me in thanking Niall for volunteering.

Call for volunteers

We finally have an auditor, but we still have several opportunities available for volunteering:

• The ACCU web site uses Xaraya, a PHP framework that has been moribund for the last 4 years at least, and a replacement is overdue.
• artin Moene has informed the committee that he will be stepping down as our web site editor effective July 1st. Please join the committee and me in expressing our thanks for all of his contributions over his years of service. (I will have more to say on this in the next issue.) This means we are not only still looking for someone to assist with web site admin duties; we now are also looking for a volunteer to take over the web site editor duties.

Please contact me if you are interested in any of these positions.

I’d like to thank Dr. Neuber and her students at St. Charles School for inviting me to participate in their Hour of Code. I had a great time interacting with the students.

References

[1] Hour of Code : https://hourofcode.com/us

[2] code.org: https://code.org/about

[3] Future City Competition: http://futurecity.org/

[4] Code Club: https://www.codeclub.org.uk/

[5] Computing at School: https://www.computingatschool.org.uk

[6] ACCU 2017: https://conference.accu.org/site/index.html

[7] ACCU 2017 Schedule: https://conference.accu.org/site/stories/2017/schedule.html

Notes: 

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