British APL Association News

Transcribed from the printed issue; not yet reviewed. Read it in the PDF of the issue, page 7

Notice of Annual General Meeting and Elections to the Committee¶

The British APL Association AGM will be held on May 23rd 1986 at the Royal Overseas League, Park Place, (off St. James’s Street), London SW1, starting at 2pm. As in previous years the AGM will be followed by one of the Association’s regular technical meetings.

All the posts on the committee are due to be filled by election at the AGM. The posts are:

• Chairman (who must be a member of the British Computer Society)
• Treasurer
• Secretary
• Activities Officer (who organises meetings and special events)
• Journals Officer (who is chief editor and organiser of VECTOR)
• Publicity Officer (who arranges promotion and coverage of the Association’s activities)
• Technical Officer (who organises technical vetting and reviews of products, articles and papers)
• Education Officer (responsible for promoting education in APL and APL in education)

Each officer is encouraged to form a working party of Association members to help with the job and to provide a deputy to report at any committee meeting that circumstances make it impossible to attend in person. All officers are asked to help with the Association’s work in other ways.

Every candidate for election to the committe must be proposed and seconded by Association members and is expected to provide a brief statement outlining their suitability and their intentions should they be elected. Every candidate is required to be a paid-up member and to recognise that it is a duty of a committee member to attend every committee meeting and to perform the appropriate tasks.

Advance nominations should be sent to the Secretary, [address omitted]. None of the above is intended to preclude last-minute proposal and seconding (at the AGM) of an individual in good standing for any office.

Committee Meeting Summary¶

by Dick Bowman and Anthony Camacho

The Committee writes a summary of the year’s committee meetings for the last VECTOR in each year; here is a table of attendance at meetings:

P=Present
A=Apologies (28 May, pre-AGM, last year’s committee)

One notable factor of the year is that we end it with the same committee as we began it with. Once again, committee meetings have normally occupied a complete morning; these summaries are a very brief account and do not reflect the considerable amount of work done for the Association outside committee meetings and indeed by many people who are not mentioned above.

28 May 1985¶

Aside from some preparation for the afternoon’s AGM there was a lot of discussion about information gained from APL85 (PSG/RJB/MC/DG/DZ had all attended). APL86 is being organised by a committee formally quite separate from the BAA committee proper – although it shares some of the same faces and reports back (via RJB) to all BAA committee meetings.

12 July 1985¶

There was a brief handover meeting on 12 June between old and new committees. VECTOR costing and production were discussed at length (VECTOR was costing us more than our income). Time was also spent on discussing ways of arranging steady streams of VECTOR articles and topics for technical meetings. DG was keen to organise an “APL in Education” day. As a promotional exercise a “buy 3 – get 1 free” membership offer was agreed.

13 September 1985¶

‘APL Publications’ announced that it would cease trading – the committee considered how to provide a source of supply of APL books for members. Alternative quotations had been received for VECTOR typesetting and printing which were discussed; a changeover plan was agreed which appeared to reduce costs significantly and which would not disrupt the quite tight scheduling implicit in quarterly publishing. Entries in the ‘free APL computer’ offer were discussed and the lucky recipient chosen.

15 November 1985¶

There was a brief brainstorming session about how to increase membership and we listed the ideas for consideration. The handover of the Association’s book stock (collected by AJC from APL Publications) to Mine of Information was agreed and that MoI could have the same advertising space in VECTOR as APL Publications had previously had. These arrangements will be reviewed after a trial period. Budget proposals for 1986/7 had been collected and possible membership rates were discussed.

17 January 1986¶

Promotional ideas had been expanded and it was agreed that we would begin by taking the following action:

a) We would advertise the BAA outside the APL community subject to RJC identifying a medium we could afford.
b) VECTOR will exchange mutual advertising with counterparts in other countries.
c) We will now accept subscriptions in US dollars.

As these actions get under way we anticipate putting additional ideas into operation. VECTOR production costs had improved as expected with the switch of printer for the previous issue – the current issue was with new typesetters. Handover of ‘APL Publications’ had been completed.

Membership Cards¶

We will not be issuing membership cards this year (a fine time to tell you, some might think); however membership cards will be issued for the 1986/7 year. Membership cards fulfil several functions, confirmation of subscription receipt (note that we are requesting subscription payment at the beginning of the year now, and will not be sending any of next year’s VECTORs until we get it), a record of your membership number and as a pass to any British APL Association events which bear a fee or are otherwise restricted to members. In the interim, please note that your membership number is shown on the address label of all BAA mailings.

Dollar subscription rates¶

With our rapidly growing overseas membership and in response to observations from existing U.S. members, the Association treasurer has decided to open a U.S. dollar bank account. This means that we are pleased to accept overseas membership subscriptions in dollars or in sterling. The following table gives the relevant rates for the coming year (1986/87) and it is hoped that our many U.S. members will take advantage of this service.

Overseas subscription rates 1986-87¶