Title: View from the Chair

Author: Bob Schmidt

Date: 01 July 2017 17:30:02 +01:00 or Sat, 01 July 2017 17:30:02 +01:00

Summary: Bob Schmidt, chair@accu.org

Body: 

2017 ACCU Conference

Our annual conference once again was held in the Bristol Marriott City Centre from the 26th through to the 29th of April. Russell Winder and his merry band of programme committee members [1] did a wonderful job of making the conference an educational and social extravaganza. Please join me in expressing our thanks to Russell and the programme [2] committee for their outstanding work. (Russell was particularly outstanding in his bright orange sweater!)

Thanks also to our Conference sponsors [1] for their support; and to Julie Archer and her team at Archer Yates Associates Ltd. [3]

Videos of most of the sessions are now available on ACCU’s YouTube channel. Head on over to YouTube and check out the sessions you weren’t able to attend. [4]

Annual General Meeting

ACCU held its Annual General Meeting on Saturday, the 29th of April, 2017, in conjunction with the 2017 ACCU Conference. On the agenda were approving the minutes from the 2016 AGM; annual reports from the officers; approval of the accounts for fiscal year 2016; election of auditors; and election of Officers and the Committee.

The minutes and the accounts were approved, and the results of the election were announced. All persons running for office were elected. The meeting pack has copies of the officers’ annual reports and a list of persons who ran for election. [5] There were several positions for which nominations were not received prior to the deadline. The incumbents for each of these positions were re-elected by acclamation. [6] Thank you to all of you who took the time to vote.

Committee Spotlight

ACCU starts its new operating year with a fully staffed executive committee, and a mostly staffed non-executive committee. Current committee members are listed on our web site, so there is no need to duplicate that list here. [6][7]

The committee remains mostly unchanged from the previous year, which has its advantages and disadvantages. An advantage is the continuity that results from low or slow turnover. One large disadvantage is the absence of new people and their new ideas. We had people running for election for each of the executive positions, but we only had one person running for each position.

You don’t have to be a committee member to work with the committee. If you have an idea that will benefit ACCU and your fellow members, please let one of us know. If you want to find out what being on the committee is like, any Member can attend committee meetings, where you can join in the conversation.

Call for Volunteers

Currently we have four vacancies in our roster of committee members. Our most immediate need is for one or more people to take over the role of web editor. As I mentioned in the last issue of CVu, long-time web editor Martin Moene has stepped down from the position as of 1 July, 2017. Prior to announcing his retirement Martin wrote a detailed description of the role. [8]

That description is quite daunting – I’m not sure any of us quite realized all that Martin has done for us during his years as web editor; thanks again, Martin! – and it may be more than any one person might want to commit to. We have discussed the idea of splitting the role amongst more than one person. If you want to contribute, but don’t want to commit to everything in the description, please let me know. All help is welcome.

• 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. [9]
• The Publicity, Study Groups, and Social Media positions have been vacant for some time. [10]

Being on the Committee is an amazing opportunity to try doing something new. You are very welcome to start and just focus on making one thing happen, and in a way the fits with your family, professional and social activities. Just getting one thing done however small is better than the post being left vacant. Committee members will support you in any way they can.

Please contact me if you are interested.

Member News

Submitting a short piece of member news is your opportunity to share your successes with your fellow members, or make a call for volunteers to help with a project you may have. I will continue to send out a reminder on accu-members shortly before the CVu deadline.

On a personal note – with this column I have the honour and privilege of starting my second year as Chair of ACCU. Thank you for your votes. Now, what am I going to write about for the next 5 issues of CVu?

References

[1] ACCU Conference Programme Committee Members and Sponsors https://conference.accu.org/site/index.html

[2] Microsoft Word really does not like it when I spell ‘programme’ the British way, with the extra ‘me’. I get the red squiggly line of bad-spelling shame. It’s time to add it to the dictionary.

[3] Archer Yates Associates Ltd. https://conference.accu.org/site/index.html

[4] ACCU YouTube Channelhttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJhay24LTpO1s4bIZxuIqKw

[5] 2017 AGM Pack http://accu.org/content/agm/AGM-2017-Pack.pdf

[6] ACCU Committee for 2017-2018https://accu.org/index.php/members/committee

[7] Listing all of the committee members here would be one way of padding the word count of this column.

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

[9] Ardent followers of this column (and that is all of you, hmm?) will notice that this item has been hanging around for some months now. Anyone out there know Xaraya and/or PHP and can lend a hand? Contact Jim Hague.

[10] ACCU Social Mediahttps://plus.google.com/+AccuOrganisationhttps://www.facebook.com/accuorg/https://twitter.com/accuorg

Notes: 

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