British APL Association News: Report on the Achievements of the 1987/88 Committee

Transcribed from the printed issue; not yet reviewed. Read it in the PDF of the issue, page 19

The committee met seven times altogether. Never did we manage all to be present at once. Average attendance at each of the 3 hour sessions was 8 of the 10 strong committee. Everybody attended most of the meetings.

What struck me about the meetings, being a newcomer, was how serious a business it all seemed to be. All members had to circulate written reports before each meeting, and there was an on-going actions list which was reissued after every meeting. I have to report that I think the 168 hours plus travelling time, report writing and minute writing might have been more constructively spent actually doing some of the things that we talked about all year.

What did we achieve? Jill Moss drew up a new BAA brochure which was printed in the autumn, which has been sent out by I-APL Ltd to enquirers, and is freely available. The teachers' course which Norman Thomson organised in Winchester is reported in VECTOR 4.2, and two similar courses are being organised for Winchester and Swansea this summer. A postal ballot was voted in at the Extraordinary General Meeting held on 20th November and the new procedures were put into effect this April. Two delegates have been sponsored to attend the ICME Conference on Mathematical Education at Budapest in July. They are both teachers who said they were prepared to speak out for APL at the conference.

A special committee meeting was convened to discuss further support to the I-APL project. A further £2,000 was given to I-APL Ltd to make BAA's total contribution £8,000. This meeting is reported in more detail in VECTOR 4.4.

The committee made considerable progress towards getting paid administrative help. If current plans meet with approval from the next committee we shall be employing someone to work up to 10 hours per week doing the many jobs that are handled by committee members which would be better done and done better by one person with time available. This might begin on an experimental basis for a year. Watch this space for developments! You may have noticed a sluggishness in the system, such as wrong dates in VECTOR for forthcoming meetings, late notification of meetings, and one very late VECTOR. (Did you realise you got 4.3 before 4.2?) I am partly to blame, but we are sure that the right kind of help will get the system running better.

Preparations for APL-ication (28-30th September) have been handled entirely by the sub-committee set up for the purpose. We hear there are going to be some good speakers.

So what didn't we achieve? A BAA bulletin board was considered but was dismissed as inappropriate to our needs at the moment. A leaflet on APL applications was beginning to be drafted. A conference for senior management was talked about, as was a regional meeting, and these may still be coming. There was discussion of producing an APL bibliography, even of sponsoring a researcher to produce one. This has not been pursued and maybe it has already been done for us; David Eastwood did a nice little bit of research when he called in at the Institution of Electrical Engineers to investigate their on-line information services. He is going to report his findings in VECTOR.

I have tried to give you a realistic picture of what your committee has been up to over the year. If you found yourself reacting to anything I have written, or are left shocked by what I have failed to mention, please ring me or write to VECTOR and let us have your suggestions.