Title: View from the Chair

Author: Bob Schmidt

Date: 01 November 2017 16:27:09 +00:00 or Wed, 01 November 2017 16:27:09 +00:00

Summary: Bob Schmidt, chair@accu.org

Body: 

After last issue’s detour, I’m back to my usual, chatty column. Let’s get started…

International Standards Development Fund

At our September meeting, the committee voted to award an ISDF grant of £500.00 to Mr Walter Brown. Mr Brown was nominated for the grant by Roger Orr, for his contributions to the ISO C++ Standards effort. Mr Brown has recently retired, and it is hoped that the grant will assist his participation in future standards meetings. Mr Brown reports that he has six or so papers for consideration at the WG21 meeting in Albuquerque in November.

ACCU’s ISDF is funded by contributions, which are kept separate from our operating accounts. Do you know someone who should be considered for an ISDF grant? Forward your nomination information to the committee – we will consider the nomination at our next scheduled committee meeting.

ACCU 2018

The next ACCU conference will be held in Bristol, UK, from the 11th through the 14th of April, 2018, with pre-conference workshops on April 10th. The conference again will be held at the Marriott City Centre, our home for the past several years.

Conference Chair Russel Winder reports that the proposal submission and review system is being rewritten. Russel says:

If you fancy contributing to the usability and/or efficacy of this Flask/SQLAlchemy/Bootstrap3/Jinja2 system, head over to github[…] [1] and get stuck in. I have no budget for any paid work on this, but if there is anyone who makes outstanding contributions, I will certainly blag [2] them a free ticket to ACCU 2018.

Russel also reports that

Austin Bingham has contributed his Elm-implemented ACCU schedule Web application. If anyone fancies working on that then head over to github[…] [3] and use the issues to debate ideas.

Web editing

Three of us on the committee have tried to take up some of the responsibilities of the web editor position. Meeting minutes are being posted. We’ve been successful at posting the PDF versions of the magazine, and have started getting caught up on posting the HTML versions. The by-author and by-article bibliographies are next on the list to tackle, followed by more regular updates of our social media channels. The e-pub versions of C Vu and Overload have been suspended until a new web editor can be found.

If you are interested in becoming web editor, please contact me at chair@accu.org.

History of ACCU

As I reported last issue, Matt Jones has been spearheading an effort to reconstruct the history of ACCU, concentrating on past committee members and honorary members. Matt reports that after an initial flurry of activity, incoming updates have started to slow down. Hopefully this means that we have fewer holes to fill in the history.

If you have information you would like to share, contact Matt at membership@accu.org.

Web site redesign

The committee discussed the idea of redesigning our web site using a newer content management platform. Currently the web site is implemented using Xaraya, which hasn’t been updated in several years. We are soliciting ideas for a new platform, such as WordPress. If you have experience with a content management platform and would like to express your opinion on its ‘-ilities’ [4], please send your comments to accu-committee@accu.com.

Member news

Francis Glassborow contacted us with some exciting news: "I have just learnt that Bjarne Stroustrup has been awarded the 2017 Faraday Medal. It is the Institute of Engineering and Technology’s highest award and previous recipients include such notable computer scientists as Maurice Wilkes, Professor Hoare, Roger Needham and, most recently, Donald Knuth." Bjarne is receiving the award: For significant contributions to the history of computing, in particular pioneering the C++ programming language. He is receiving it on 15th November.

References

[1] https://github.com/ACCUConf/ACCUConf_Submission_Web_Application

[2] www.thefreedictionary.com blag – 1. to obtain by wheedling or cadging: she blagged free tickets from her mate. My vocabulary is greatly expanded by reading Russel’s emails.

[3] https://github.com/ACCUConf/ACCUConf_Schedule_Web_Application

[4] ‘The 7 Software “-ilities” You Need To Know’

{codesqueeze}

http://codesqueeze.com/the-7-software-ilities-you-need-to-know/

Notes: 

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