British APL Association News

Transcribed from the printed issue; not yet reviewed. Read it in the PDF of the issue, page 10

Members may be interested to know what the BAA is doing about APL 96. As it is to be held in Lancaster one would expect the local APL organisation to be involved. Since the very first international APL conference these conferences have always been controlled by and usually financed by SigAPL, which is a special interest group of the Association for Computing Machinery (usually known as the ACM), the United States equivalent of the British Computer Society.

Below is the text of the reply from our chairman, sent on 22 September to Bob Brown the SigAPL conference co-ordinator.

Thank you for your email requesting commitment from the British APL Association to APL96 at Lancaster.

Several members of the BAA returned from APL95 with the understanding that a budget for the proposed APL96 would be received in early July. The BAA committee met on 7th July, but no budget had materialised and so no decision could be made, as (like ACM) the BCS does not commit funds without a formal budget and proposal.

We did, however, give our backing to the programme proposed by Adrian Smith and resolved to give financial backing to a conference based on that programme as soon as SIGAPL had produced the required budget.

As you may be aware, a year ago the BAA declined an invitation to organise APL96. Those of our members who have the necessary skills are heavily committed elsewhere at this time and so we cannot take the lead in this project.

Financially, we need a budget that breaks even with a relatively small number of delegates, as we believe that a conference in the UK with such a short lead time is unlikely to attract large numbers. If a suitable budget is produced, and Adrian is still willing to organise the programme, we will make BAA funds available as soon as SIGAPL does the same.

Alan Mayer
Chairman, British APL Association.