Title: View from the Chair

Author: Bob Schmidt

Date: 01 January 2018 16:37:39 +00:00 or Mon, 01 January 2018 16:37:39 +00:00

Summary: Bob Schmidt, chair@accu.org

Body: 

Committee spotlight

We have some upcoming changes to the makeup of the ACCU committee.

• Malcolm Noyes, ACCU’s Secretary, has informed the committee that he will not be seeking re-election in 2018, after four years of service. If I recall correctly, Malcolm tried to step away from the role in 2016, but volunteered to continue as secretary when no one else stood for election that year, and then stood for re-election in 2017. Malcolm will finish his out his term ending at the AGM in April, 2018.
• Rob Pauer has announced that he would like to retire from his role as Treasurer. Rob has been treasurer since 2011, and has been retired from his career in insurance and pensions for several years. Rob would like to have a new treasurer shadow his activities for a few months in preparation for taking over full-time. (Rob has been a member of ACCU since 1987, and is believed to be the longest current member of ACCU.)
• Jonathan Wakely is stepping down from his role as Standards Officer. Jonathan recently became a father (congratulations Jon!), with all of the time constraints associated with parenthood.

Please join me in thanking Malcolm, Rob, and Jon for their contributions to ACCU.

Emyr Williams and Guy Davidson have volunteered to work together to be Standards officer. There are details remaining to be worked out, since Guy currently is serving his second year as Auditor, a position that is independent of the committee. Thank you to both of them for volunteering.

2018 Annual General Meeting

ACCU’s 2018 Annual General Meeting (AGM) will be held on Saturday, April 14th, 2018, at the Marriott City Centre in Bristol, UK, in conjunction with the 2018 ACCU conference. The important dates associated with the AGM are in the table below.

AGM Deadlines

14 January 2018 Official Announcement Date 90 days prior to AGM 13 February 2018 Proposal and Nomination Deadline 60 days prior to AGM 3 March 2018 Draft Agenda 42 days prior to AGM 17 March 2018 Agenda Freeze 28 days prior to AGM 24 March 2018 Voting Opens 21 days prior to AGM

The most important part of our pre-AGM activities is election of officers. From ACCU’s constitution [1]:

5.3.1 Members of the Committee shall hold office from the date of appointment until the next Annual General Meeting, and shall be eligible for re-election.

5.3.3 Any member of the Association can stand as a candidate for election to any role on the committee. Any such member shall notify the Secretary in writing (letter or email), including names of a nominating member and a seconder, on or before the Proposal Deadline (described in ‘Section 7 – General Meetings’). The same person cannot stand for more than one role in the same election.

As of now, ACCU will have at least three critical committee positions to fill in April: secretary, treasurer, and auditor (and possibly a fourth, as I have not yet decided if I will stand for re-election as chair). Secretary and treasurer are elected each year; auditors volunteer for staggered two year terms.

ACCU has had trouble getting people to volunteer for positions in the organization. (In 2016, two executive committee roles had no one standing for election; in 2017, all incumbents ran unopposed. The position of Web Editor has been vacant for six months.) In this I suspect we are not much different from most volunteer organizations.

I get it. We all have other stuff to do. I myself have never been much of a joiner, let alone a volunteer. (You may recall, from my very first View, my wife’s reaction to the news that I volunteered to serve on the committee – “she just laughed”.) Nevertheless, ACCU needs people to fill these roles. Ideally we need multiple people standing for each role, to give substance to our elections.

If you would like to nominate someone for a role, or would like to volunteer to stand for election, please send an email to accu-committee@accu.org. Nominations are due by 13 February 2018.

WG21 Albuquerque

Carter Edwards (sponsor of the meeting) and Herb Sutter (convener of WG21) graciously allowed ACCU to distribute copies of the most recent Overload and advertise the upcoming conference during the week. Thanks to both of them for their support.

International standards development fund

You may recall from my last column that the committee awarded an ISDF grant to Mr Walter Brown. I’m pleased to report that the grant allowed Mr Brown to travel to Albuquerque for the fall WG21 meeting, where I was honoured to make his acquaintance.

ACCU 2018

As mentioned above, the next ACCU conference will be held in Bristol, U.K., 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.

Web site redesign

As announced last issue, we are soliciting ideas for a new platform for ACCU’s website. As this issue goes to press we have not gotten any feedback. If you have experience with a content management platform and would like to express your opinion on it, please send your comments to accu-committee@accu.com.

Overload Reviewers

Fran Buontempo, editor of Overload, has announced additions to the makeup of the magazine’s peer review team. Please join me in welcoming these new reviewers to the Overload team:

• Kaartic Sivaramm
• Craig Inches
• Yubin Ruan
• Tor Arve Strangeland
• Balog Pal †
• Araray Velho
• Philipp Schwaha †
• Gennaro Prota
• Christopher Gilbert
• Ben Curry †
• Paul Johnson †

† Have already commented on Overload 142 articles!

Finally, Fran has announced that Phil Bass has stepped down as a reviewer. On behalf of the committee I’d like to thank Phil for his service to Overload and ACCU.

Reference

[1] ACCU Constitution.https://accu.org/index.php/constitution

Notes: 

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