Title: View from the Chair

Author: Bob Schmidt

Date: 01 May 2019 23:17:51 +01:00 or Wed, 01 May 2019 23:17:51 +01:00

Summary: Bob Schmidt, chair@accu.org

Body: 

Another year has passed, and it is once again time for ACCU’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) and the start of a new term. First, we need to look back at the year that is ending.

After an uptick in membership at the end of 2017, in 2018 we returned to our downward trend in membership. According to the numbers compiled by Matt Jones (Membership Secretary), in December 2017 we had 670 members compared to 618 members in December 2018. This represents an almost ten percent decline in membership in one year. 2019 year-to-date numbers remain flat.

This continues to be our biggest concern. Obviously we can’t maintain 10 percent losses in membership forever. At some point, our fixed costs will exceed our income from membership, and we will have to tap our surplus to pay our bills.

It hasn’t been all bad news:

• Our financial situation remains strong, with ACCU finishing 2018 with a surplus for the fiscal year. Conference revenues continue to be the main source of our surpluses.
• Overload and CVu continue to excel under the stewardship of Fran Buontempo and Steve Love (respectively).
• We published our response to the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), thanks to the efforts of Nigel Lester.
• Our local groups continue to experience strong membership growth, as measured by the number of people signed up for the respective Meetup Groups. (As was the case last year, the large number of new Meetup members has not resulted in an increase in ACCU members.)
• We are in the beginning phases of moving our web site to a new platform, with a new look. Jim Hague (Webmaster) has created a framework with which we can move forward.
• As of this writing, registrations for the 2019 conference are a little lower than last year, but higher than for 2017. Concerns over Brexit may be contributing to the decline.

We continue to have other challenges:

• We continue to have difficulty getting people to volunteer, resulting in long-term vacancies on the committee. The Publicity, Study Groups, Social Media, Web Editor, and Book Reviews positions have all been vacant for at least a year. The committee has discussed discontinuing some of the positions that have been vacant for the longest periods of time.
• We continue to need authors and articles for our magazines. You probably have noticed that the page count of the magazines varies from month to month, which is based on the content received during the two months preceding publication.

We have some changes coming to the makeup of the ACCU Committee:

• Our Treasurer, Rob Pauer, has decided to not seek reelection for the 2019–2020 term. As of this writing, we have not had anyone volunteer to run for the position.
• After many years of service, Nigel Lester is stepping down as Local Groups Coordinator. Phil Nash is standing for the position.
• Emyr Williams is stepping down as Standards Officer. Guy Davidson is running to take over in that role.

Because Guy is planning to join the committee, he will not be available to finish his second year as Auditor. We will need to find someone to fill that role. Niall Douglas’ current term as auditor is ending.

We should have some continuity on the committee, with the following people running for their current positions: Matt Jones, Membership Secretary; Patrick Martin, Secretary; Roger Orr, Publications; and Ralph McArdell, At-large. Russel Winder (ACCU Conference Chair), Seb Rose (Advertising), Jim Hague (Webmaster), and Daniel James (ePub Editor) remain as co-opted members of the committee.

As always my thanks go out to all of ACCU’s volunteers: committee members; magazine editors, writers and reviewers; local group organizers; auditors; and conference committee members. Special thanks to Rob, Nigel, Emyr, and Niall for their service.

In other news, we are pleased to announce that Felix Petriconi has been selected as ACCU Conference Chair, starting after the 2020 conference. Felix will shadow Russel Winder during the planning for the 2020 conference (which will be Russel’s last as Conference Chair) in order to ensure a smooth handover.

Felix finished his Electrical Engineering studies in 1993, and started his career as a freelance programmer in the telecommunications and automotive industries. In 2003, Felix joined MeVis Medical Solutions AG in Bremen, Germany, as a programmer and development manager, where he is part of a team that develops radiological medical devices. He is a regular speaker at the C++ user group in Bremen, and has been a speaker at software conferences in Bristol, Berlin, Milan, and Wroclaw. He is a blog editor of https://isocpp.org and a contributor to the https://stlab.cc open source concurrency library. Felix has been a member of the ACCU Conference committee since 2016.

Please join me in thanking Felix for volunteering for this very important and high-profile position within ACCU.

Portions of this ‘View’ appeared in the 2019 Annual General Meeting Information Pack as part of the Chair’s Report.

Notes: 

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