Title: A Personal View

My original mandate was to play a kind of Devil's Advocate vis-à-vis the establishment. Over the years I have had relatively few causes to castigate the internals of ACCU. However no sooner to I write my final piece than I learn of something that really must be brought to a wider audience.

As you all know (or at least I hope you do) the process by which our publications get produced is changing as of the next issue. Printing has always been done out of house by a commercially paid supplier. More recently distribution has taken the same path. Everything else has been done internally. What is this 'everything else'? Well it starts with the acquisition and commissioning of material and proceeds from there through all the processes up to and including the production of final page proofs and printing masters.

In a commercial organisation this would cover at least three distinct jobs: 'Features Editor', 'Sub-editor' and 'Editor'. Pick up a copy of something like EXE Magazine or the C/C++ Users Journal and see how many editorial staff are involved. Granted that some of these might be part-timers and some might work for more than one publication from the same publisher but any way you look at it the human resources are considerable. You may begin to realise just what a massive job has been done over the years by our volunteer editors (not just Francis, but those editing CAUGers and Overload as well).

You would think, would you not, that before asking for tenders to supply our publications (see the last issue of C Vu) that those responsible would have drafted a carefully considered specification of what was needed? Well as far as I can discover, no such document was ever produced.

I understand from Francis that the selection committee finally accepted his tender. However, we as ordinary members, have no way to evaluate this decision. I have no doubt that their decision was the right one this time, but what about next time?

I know that it is hard and that no one likes doing it but there does need to be fully specified 'job descriptions' and 'product requirements' for those that are responsible for the organisation and tangible benefits that ACCU provides. This is desirable when the work is being done by volunteers because it allows them to know the magnitude of the task before taking it on. It is essential when you are asking for bids for doing commercial work. Frankly I do not understand how anyone could have considered bidding on the basis of the notice in C Vu 11.5. And only Francis and the other editors have any idea as to what work is entailed. Only the Committee can decide what part of that work should be contracted for and what part should continue to be done on voluntary lines. I urge the ACCU Committee, as a matter of urgency, produce a document itemising and categorising the work required to produce our publications. As soon as they have done that they should set about producing a similar document relating to our Web based activities and prepare to put part of that out to tender.

I think that the entire membership should be very grateful for all the work done by volunteers to provide our publications and electronic information resources. There are many commercial web sites that are much less well managed than ours is. The part-time voluntary activity that provides such an excellent service to the C/C++ and Java community as a whole is outstanding but some time in the not too distant future that work may grow to where it will needed to be contracted out.

Even when we pay for a service we should seek suppliers who are committed to providing high quality and who try to deliver in the spirit of any agreement and not just to the written word. I am reminded that Parchment who have printed our publications for almost a decade have provided exactly that added value. Francis tells me that when things have gone wrong there has never been a quibble about putting them right.

Such things do not show up in tenders, but good judgement by those selecting suppliers includes being able to distinguish between 'the money is all that counts' brigade and those that take a pride in doing a job to the best of their ability.

I have a lot of sympathy with George's view. I certainly hope that the ACCU Committee will provide such a detailed specification and clearly delineate what we can reasonably expect to be provided voluntarily and what is bought in.

Much depends on the future growth of ACCU. Without the outstanding support from Centaur Communications we could not have contemplated paying for editorial work with our current membership size. Members need to make a special effort to increase the paid membership. Sadly, if I am honest, without a return to substantial growth the many good things that ACCU does will fade away.

For example the value of our book review section on our Web site rapidly decays if we stop reviewing such a wide range of books. We need to continue to publish reviews of the good, the bad and the indifferent. Doing that takes time and resources. It would be difficult for me to quantify the time and resources that I provide in ensuring that books are available for review and get reviewed. Michael Minihane's long term service looking after the list of available books and managing requests is very valuable but I think even he might shudder at all the other work involved. You may not realise it but most publishers place ACCU in a very special category. If we ask for a review copy we get one, if we ask for review copies of ten books we get them all. They know that we will not manage to actually review every book we offer for review but they also know that we try to and get pretty near to achieving that target.

ACCU will always require many volunteers, and every member should recognise that the low cost of membership is because so many add value by their efforts. At the same time our ongoing success requires that major services are provided consistently and professionally. However idealistic we are we need to recognise that we need funds to pay for delivery at that level. Our arrangements for the coming year are based on payments way below the commercial rate. Put out to commercial tender the work being provided by Centaur Communications would cost between five and ten times as much per issue. The editor of a publication such as EXE Magazine would be paid three to four times what ACCU will be paying for the next year's issues of C Vu and Overload. And then such publications also have sub-editors etc.

I do not think the membership has any right to be critical of the Officers and Committee for their handling of the current contract. What events demonstrated was just how much work has to be done and how difficult that is within a distributed organisation. I shall be working with the ACCU Committee to try to tie down a better task specification and to separate those elements that should continue to be done on a voluntary basis from those that should be paid for, albeit at non-commercial rates.