Title: View from the Chair

Author: Martin Moene

Date: 01 May 2017 09:26:52 +01:00 or Mon, 01 May 2017 09:26:52 +01:00

Summary: Bob Schmidt, chair@accu.org

Body: 

This installment of the ‘View’ is my sixth, which means that a full year has gone by since I started as acting chair. I volunteered for the position of Acting Chair after last year’s AGM, when the position remained vacant after the election. My stated main goal at that time was to “keep the organization ticking along.” I will be the first to admit that, as goals go, keeping the organization ticking along is not the most inspiring, but it had the advantage of being achievable.

ACCU has had successes in the past year:

• Our website was migrated successfully to a new hosting platform, thanks to the efforts of Jim Hague.
• We published our new Diversity Statement.
• The conference web site has been reworked, and continues to improve as new features are added, thanks to our Conference Chair, Russel Winder, and his collaborators.
• Our new Code of Conduct was developed for the 2017 conference, along with guidelines for reporting and processing violations.
• Our local group affiliates have experienced strong membership growth.
• Our financial situation remains strong, with ACCU finishing 2016 with a small surplus for the fiscal year.
• Instructions on creating a Local Group were developed and published, thanks to the efforts of Nigel Lester.
• Overload and CVu continue their traditions of being high-quality publications, thanks to editors Fran Buontempo and Steve Love, and our member and non-member contributors.

We have also had our challenges:

• ACCU membership has continued its slow, gradual decline. Reversing this trend is a constant topic amongst the committee, as it has been for several years. I’m sorry to say that I have not been successful in finding a solution to this problem; I consider this my biggest failure over the past year.
• We still need to replace several pieces of our web infrastructure
• We continue to find it difficult to recruit volunteers for committee positions. We had an acting chair and acting secretary from April 2016 until the special election in September. The Publicity, Study Groups, and Social Media positions remain vacant. The web editor position will become vacant as of the first of July.

On balance, I believe the past year has been a success, and I have every confidence that the coming year will continue the trend. This year we have a full slate of candidates for the executive members of the committee, so it is unlikely that we will start off the 2017–2018 term with a critical vacancy.

I started the role of chair without having any other experience working with the committee. (I was an auditor for one year, but that role is separate from the committee.) I’d like to thank the other committee members for their help in getting me up to speed; their comments and suggestions to make my bi-monthly Views from the Chair better and more accurate; and their commitment of time and energy to making ACCU a success.

Committee Spotlight. As I mentioned in the last CVu, Martin Moene is stepping down as ACCU’s website editor effective the first of July. Martin has served as website editor since 2013. A quick look at the description of the role of web editor on the ACCU website (written by Martin) [1] shows how valuable his participation has been. In addition to all of that, he introduced the production of ePub versions of our two magazines.

Please join me in thanking Martin for all of his contributions and hard work. He will leave large shoes to fill.

Call for volunteers

• 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.
• We hope to recruit someone to fill the position of website editor before Martin’s term concludes.
• As mentioned above, the Publicity, Study Groups, and Social Media positions have been vacant for some time.

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

Portions of this View appeared in the Annual General Meeting Information Pack as part of the Chair’s Report.

References

[1] Role of Website Editor https://accu.org/index.php/members/committee/posts_and_roles#website_editor

Notes: 

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