Minutes of the AGM of the British APL Association held on 5 June 1987

Transcribed from the printed issue; not yet reviewed. Read it in the PDF of the issue, page 9

Minutes of the AGM of the British APL Association¶

held on 5 June 1987

On arrival members were ticked off on a membership list and handed a voting card which was yellow (5 votes) for a corporate or sustaining member or purple (1 vote) for an individual member. Corporate or sustaining members could take five individual votes if they wished.

Chairman’s survey of the year¶

Dick Bowman thanked Phil Goacher for making the offer to hold APL 86 in the UK; without that we could not have made the success of it that we did. APL 86 has given us a financial base which greatly increases the scope of what we can do. Some initiatives already begun are listed below.

Vector is now well established in the international APL community and is well and economically run. Its advertisements cover most of its costs. To make it an essential part of every APLer’s life it needs more useful technical contributions.

We have had some difficulties with our regular meetings because the elected Activities Officer was unable to set up a forward plan. He has since resigned and a new activities team is beginning to get that under control.

The initiatives:

Surveys

1. A survey of members and their views, which will be reported in Vector.
2. A survey of the awareness and use of APL in higher education: this shows high awareness but that APL will only be used when it is seen to be relevant.

APLication

This is to be a three day special event on APL applications to be held in September 1988 at the University of Kent in Canterbury. It is not APL 88 (Northern Hemisphere).

Awards

The Committee proposes two outstanding achievement awards, which will be:

1. for recent work in APL, and
2. for spreading awareness about APL.

These awards will not be made when the Committee does not feel the best candidates are outstanding enough.

Education

A substantial contribution was made to I-APL. A subsidised course for teachers is to be held in July.

Software Library

The catalogue is growing – it made many acquisitions at APL 87 and is now beginning to generate orders. Success depends on members sending good software and telling people about the good software available in the library.

Dick Bowman ended by expressing his personal satisfaction at having been nominated to stand for the board of SIGAPL.

Secretary’s report.¶

Anthony Camacho reported that the minute book was available for anyone to inspect and included minutes of meetings since the summary in the Turquoise Vector (3.4).

The APL book service is now installed at the University of Warwick bookshop: they take credit card orders by telephone. There will again be a booklist in Vector 4.1.

This AGM had to be postponed: the original date clashed with APL 87. A new Editor could not be elected in time to edit Vector 4.1 so the Secretary had perforce to take that on.

The Secretary had objected to paying the Royal Over-Seas League £40 for the half-day hire of an overhead projector and had found and arranged for the Association to buy the portable machine being used today.

Treasurer’s report¶

Mel Chapman circulated a report and accounts. These showed that APL 86 had made about £50,000 profit. This year expenditure on publicity and meetings was well below budget. The £7,000 owed to us is from Vector advertisements and APL 86 delegates. The latter are to be threatened with an international blacklist.

In answer to questions he reported that:

the membership was 432 including 44 corporate and 11 sustaining members. Vector circulation is about 800.

the bank interest for the year is low because the profit for APL 86 was not paid to us until the end of the year. Interest is currently being earned at about £400 per month.

each meeting costs about £220.

Tim Perry asked what financial control there was over the donation to I-APL. Dick Bowman said the committee had approved the Technical Specification and Marketing Plan. Tim was not satisfied, saying that the contribution made in his name had been without his knowledge and against his will. He asked who ran I-APL, what was its status and what had the BAA done to ensure its contribution would not be misused. Dick Bowman emphasised that I-APL was not a BAA project and asked the Chairman of I-APL to answer.

Anthony Camacho explained that the I-APL project was controlled by a committee of five: himself, Ed Cherlin, Norman Thomson, Professor Howard Peelle and David Ziemann. I-APL had been formed into a limited company so that contributors could be sure accounts would be kept and presented at Companies’ House. The Committee were also the directors of the company and had declared that I-APL would never pay a dividend but would devote all funds from donations and sales to the promotion of APL. I-APL (apart from one paid programmer) is entirely a voluntary and non-commercial organisation.

Asked about spin-off from the development of I-APL, Anthony replied that I-APL Ltd had agreed with Paul Chapman that if Paul or the project succeeded in selling the Development Environment as a commercial product, the proceeds would go half to Paul and half to I-APL Ltd.

The Chairman and Secretary then held the election of the 1987-88 committee.

The candidate list was:

* The asterisks mark those elected.

There was a second vote for the post of Chairman as the first vote was a dead heat and the 86-87 chairman declined to make a casting vote. The result was:

Mel Chapman and Jill Moss won the other two contested elections easily.

The requirement that each candidate submit a brief statement (to be read out by Chairman or Secretary) outlining suitability and intentions should they be elected was not honoured by all candidates. Dick Bowman and Mel Chapman each made a little speech and David Eastwood also spoke briefly in favour of Bernadette Leverton.

The AGM ended at approximately 3.30 pm.

Anthony Camacho, retiring Hon Sec, 7 June 1987