Title: View from the Chair

Author: Bob Schmidt

Date: 01 July 2018 16:21:26 +01:00 or Sun, 01 July 2018 16:21:26 +01:00

Summary: Bob Schmidt, chair@accu.org

Body: 

ACCU has been very busy since my last report.

2018 AGM and election

ACCU’s Annual General Meeting was held on Saturday, 14th April. The draft minutes of the meeting are available to members online [1], so I won’t go into too many details here. The most important part of the AGM, from my perspective, was the nomination and election of Patrick Martin to the role of Secretary. (More on Patrick below.) This, in addition to the re-election of the rest of the executive committee (Robert Pauer, Treasurer; Matt Jones, Membership Secretary) means we can continue to conduct all regular ACCU business for the next term.

The following people were also elected or re-elected to non-executive committee roles: Nigel Lester, Local Groups; Ralph McArdell, At-large; Roger Orr, Publications; and Emyr Williams, Standards. Guy Davidson and Niall Douglas were approved to continue as Auditors.

ACCU 2018

ACCU held its annual conference at the Marriott City Centre in Bristol in April. I’m pleased to report that the conference was a success. Attendance was higher than ever – 450 total attendees, with an average of 320 per day. The attendees and speakers were also the most diverse they have ever been.

Our conference chair, Russel Winder, and the members of his conference committee are to be commended on the fine job they did putting the conference program together. Julie Archer and her team from Archer Yates Associates (AYA) continue to perform their organizational magic in keeping the conference running smoothly.

Conference committee: Gail Ollis, Roger Orr, Felix Petriconi, CB Bailey, Anastasia Kazakova, Jon Kalb, Nina Dinka Ranns, Francis Glassborow.

AYA team: Charlotte Tanswell, Laura Nason, Helen Wormall, Marsha Goodwin.

My thanks (and hopefully, all of yours, too!) go out to Russel, Julie, and their respective team members for another great conference.

Next year’s conference is already in the planning stages. I’ll have more information for you on ACCU 2019 as the conference gets closer.

Committee spotlight

We have two new volunteers!

Patrick Martin volunteered to run for, and was elected, ACCU Secretary at the AGM. Patrick is a software engineer, music fan and lapsed science PhD, in roughly that order. Patrick has worked for SunGard, Deloitte and Touche, Bloomberg, Aquila Group Holdings, among others. He has done a fair amount of ‘backend’ and ‘front-end’ work in various arenas and the inevitable consequence is chalking up exposure to a number of tools and methodologies. He also has ambitions to write on technical matters that interests him. [Start with CVu and Overload, Patrick!]

Daniel James volunteered to look into the process by which our magazines are converted to ePub format, which haven’t been available since the web editor position went vacant last year. Daniel is a software designer and programmer specializing in information security. He has been a member of ACCU since 2000, and is a regular attendee of the conference. Daniel also presented at ACCU 2018 [2].

Please join me in thanking Patrick and Daniel for volunteering their time to ACCU.

GDPR

Nigel Lester has done an excellent job doing a deep dive into the intricacies of the EU’s new General Data Protection Regulation, and developing ACCU’s response to keep us in compliance. As a result we have a new page on our website – Privacy Policy – located in the ACCU Menu [3]. Still in draft form and going through refinements as of this writing, ACCU’s Privacy Policy enumerates the data we collect; who we do and do not share it with; and your rights and our responsibilities under the GDPR.

Thanks to Nigel and everyone who assisted him in the drafting of our Privacy Policy.

ACCU World of Code

Several months ago Andy Balaam introduced us [4] to his blog aggregator at Planet Code [5]. At the time he volunteered to help ACCU set up a similar aggregator on our site. Webmaster Jim Hague worked with Andy to get our ACCU aggregation page up and running [6]. If you would like your blog to be considered for inclusion in the aggregation, please contact Jim at webmaster@accu.org. Thanks to Andy and Jim for getting additional content on our web site.

Twitter

If you pull up our website (www.accu.org) or our Twitter feed (www.twitter.com/accuorg) you might have noticed a small increase in our Social Media activity. I’ve been trying to post something every week in order to keep our front-page content fresh. If you have any ideas for additional content – don’t tell me, volunteer for the Social Media position on the committee!

Call for volunteers

We still need volunteers. Last issue I promised to drop your name if you volunteered, and sure enough, in this issue I’ve put Patrick’s and Daniel’s names up in bright lights not-so-bright print. You could be next!

• Web Editor
• Book Reviews
• Social Media
• Publicity
• Study Groups

On a personal note, this marks the start of my third year as Chair. I’d like to express my thanks to everyone who voted in our election this past March, and also thank you for once again putting your trust in me. It is an honour and a privilege to serve you.

References and notes

[1] Draft 2018 AGM Minutes:https://accu.org/content/agm/AGM-2018-Minutes(Draft).pdf

[2] ‘Cryptography for Programmers’, Daniel James: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wiYUEyXC00

[3] ACCU Privacy Policy: https://accu.org/index.php/privacy_policy

[4] Planet Code, CVu 29-5, November 2017:https://accu.org/index.php/journals/2431

[5] Planet Code:http://www.artificialworlds.net/planetcode/

[6] ACCU World of Code:https://blogs.accu.org/

Notes: 

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