Title: View from the Chair

Author: Bob Schmidt

Date: 01 May 2020 17:23:54 +01:00 or Fri, 01 May 2020 17:23:54 +01:00

Summary: Bob Schmidt, chair@accu.org

Body: 

ACCU’s 2019–2020 term has ended, not with its usual bang (the conference), but with a whimper (courtesy of the novel coronavirus).

ACCU 2020 Conference

I know that many of you were looking forward to a week of education and socializing at ACCU 2020, as was I. As concerns about the virus grew, companies adopted no-travel policies, and the number of cancellations amongst the keynote speakers and presenters outpaced our ability to find substitutes. This led Archer-Yates Associates (AYA), in conjunction with the conference committee, to make the tough decision to cancel the conference. Given the rate at which the virus has spread, and the subsequent governmental reactions to the pandemic, cancelling the conference was absolutely the correct thing to do.

This was to be Russel Winder’s final year as conference chair. It is a shame that he, and we, won’t get to experience the culmination of his five years of dedication to the conference. Please join me in thanking Russel for his contribution to ACCU.

State of ACCU

2019 saw a slight decrease in paid membership, from 532 (non-corporate) members at the beginning of 2019 to 515 at the beginning of 2020. This is a lower rate of attrition than ACCU experienced in 2018. Membership numbers are flat for 2020 year-to-date. In order to try to boost membership, the committee has decided to offer a temporary, basic membership to conference attendees who were not already members. (AYA sent the offer to registrants via email.) Our hope is that a person who test drives a temporary membership will recognize the value and convert to a regular membership.

Our financial situation remains strong. ACCU finished 2019 with a £6,167 surplus. Once again, the revenues we received from AYA for the 2019 conference accounted for the surplus. This is important because we won’t have a conference contribution in 2020; we expect our accounts for this year to be break-even.

Fran Buontempo and Steve Love continue to produce quality issues of Overload and C Vu (respectively), assisted by their teams of highly-capable peer reviewers. Getting content from authors continues to be a challenge.

Although we have filled several positions recently (Publicity, Study Groups, Reviews; see below), we continue to have chronically vacant positions on the committee. The Social Media and Web Editor positions have been vacant for over three years. Advertising isn’t chronically vacant yet, but it is heading that way. Last year the committee adopted an incentive to fill chronically vacant positions, offering up to a year of membership in return for a year of service.

Our local groups continue to be a strong part of ACCU’s outreach. We added a new local group in York this past year. Phil Nash has plans to expand the reach of our affiliated groups program. Thank you to all our local group and affiliated group coordinators.

ACCU Committee

The 2020 Annual General Meeting (AGM) was held online, via Zoom, on 28 March 2020. Seventeen members attended the meeting. The agenda and AGM pack are available to members online. As of this writing the draft minutes have not yet been posted.

We need volunteers to run for Chair and Secretary. Both of those positions remain vacant after the AGM. ACCU has been placed into caretaker mode, where only day-to-day business can be transacted.

We had some changes to the makeup of the ACCU committee over the past year:

• Seb Rose stepped down from the Advertising role last May, after many years in that position.
• Ian Bruntlett has been doing a wonderful job as Reviews Editor since last summer.
• Phil Nash succeeded Nigel Lester as Local Groups Coordinator.
• Guy Davidson took over as Standards Officer from Emyr Williams.

The results of elections were as follows:

• Matt Jones will continue as Membership Secretary.
• Patrick Martin is moving from Secretary to Treasurer.
• After many years of service, Rob Pauer is stepping down as Treasurer. Rob will take on the ceremonial role of Treasurer Emeritus, and remain active with the committee, facilitating a smooth transition to Patrick as the new treasurer.
• Roger Orr will continue in Publications; Ralph McArdell will continue as the At-Large member; Jim Hague will continue as Webmaster.
• Ian, Phil, and Guy were re-elected to their respective positions.

We have two members who have been co-opted to fill chronically vacant positions on the committee:

• Ricardo Rodriguez will take over as Study Groups Coordinator. Ricardo is a teacher in Miama, Florida, USA, and is studying for a career change as a software professional. Ricardo’s teaching experience should serve him well as Study Groups Coordinator.
• Adeel Nadeem has volunteered to handle Publicity for ACCU. Adeel is a Software Engineering recruiter from Bristol. He studied Economics at Reading University in 2008. For the last 10 years he has dedicated his career to helping the C++ community, building software engineering teams across the UK and developing some fantastic relationships along the way. When not working, he enjoys making the most if his National Trust membership and breathing in some fresh air outside the city, or experimenting in the kitchen where he claims to make a mean curry.

Our auditors for the past year were Alan Griffiths and Deitmar Kühl. Alan filled Guy Davidson’s second year, when Guy became Standards Officer. (Auditors are separate from, and independent of, the committee. Guy couldn’t be an auditor and serve on the committee at the same time.) Deitmar has just completed the first year of his two-year term. During the AGM, Alan volunteered to start a new two year term.

Daniel James has produced the ePub version of our magazine every month for two years, and continues in that role. I will be continuing to participate on the committee as co-opted web editor.

Felix Petriconi will be taking over as Conference Chair starting with the 2021 conference. He has been shadowing Russel for the past year in order to make the hand over as seamless as possible.

Finally, Thank You

As always my thanks go out to all of ACCU’s volunteers. (I hope I have named everyone in the paragraphs above.) You have made the past four years a wonderful experience for me.

A special thank you goes out to Rob Pauer, our Treasurer for many years. Rob has been retired from his ‘real’ job for several years, and now is able to go into full retirement. Rob has the distinction of having been an active member of ACCU for the longest period of time (having joined a year before Francis Glassborow). Rob assures us that he will continue to be active in the organization, for which we should all be thankful.

This is my 24th, and final, View as Chair. I hope you have found my ramblings informative, if not entertaining. Thanks for reading.

Portions of this article appeared in the ACCU 2020 AGM Pack.

Notes: 

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