The State of the APL Association

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

I am concerned about the APL Association. I am also trying to help in various ways but I think more is needed than I can do. I know I am not alone in asking what has gone wrong. I have protested privately to Treasurer, Chairman and Secretary more than once. Although I have received apologies on occasions when I have personally been let down there is still no explanation or improvement. Things cannot be put right if officers neither discharge their obligations nor ask for help when things get too much for them.

The symptoms are that:

1. meetings have been arranged too late - it is a long time since Vector has been able to list the subjects of future meetings.
2. publicity has not been sent out in time for several meetings - one was cancelled because speakers withdrew when no notice had been sent out by the Monday before the meeting.
3. no advantage is taken of the free listings of events in the computer magazines or of many other opportunities of publicising APL and the Association.
4. many members who have paid their subscription have not received Vector or notices of meetings - it is some time since I was an officer of the Association, but people ring me up in the hope I can do something.
5. Vector is always late - so late that members who don’t receive it assume it is lateness rather than some error in the mailing system.
6. inadequate use has been made of the hired clerical assistance (Alison Chatterton) or of the computer with which the Association provided her.
7. the Association’s membership is being allowed to shrink with no visible effort to recruit new members or to persuade old members to renew their subscriptions.

The main benefit the Association provides is Vector, the other significant benefit for some members is the meetings. Surely we should do our best to see that every member gets the benefits.

The last mailing of Vector was made with an incomplete set of labels and so between 150 and 200 members (fully paid up) have not yet received Vector 5.1. As nobody knows who was left out, the Vector working group has to write to everyone and ask: how embarrassing!

The membership system in use at present is not in APL and the Association does not own the package it runs on. Surely we should use APL to maintain our membership list. The current package is inadequate and for example it took two months to get it adjusted to produce labels on the APL Association’s printer.

I-APL has a membership maintenance workspace (written by Sylvia Camacho in APL*PLUS/PC) which we are donating to the Association and amending to suit its needs. We are also going to convert the membership list into a component file which can easily be maintained and used. Alison Chatterton (the Association’s administrative assistant) used to work full time with APL and will find the workspace much easier to manage than a package. We have undertaken to help to produce a set of labels at any time, given two days notice.

The Activities officer’s predecessor should have handed over a year’s planned meetings, but did not. This explains the lateness of arrangements of the early meetings this year, but only the early ones. Publicity is still absent; notices are still late. Two of the meetings have been splendid and of great interest to professonal users of APL, but very poorly attended. This, I guess, is the consequence of the failure to advertise; worse meetings had much bigger audiences two years ago. How far ahead are the meetings planned now? Today is 6 February and I have not yet received a notice of the 17 February meeting.

I am told that 164 of those who were members in 1987-88 have so far not renewed their memberships. I believe no reminders have been sent out. Is this true? A previous Treasurer once used to send out a membership subscription reminder in the form of an empty Vector - just a photocopy of the cover so that the recipients could see some of the things they were missing. This reduced the drop-out rate greatly.

The recruitment officer a year or more ago promised to prepare a list of members who would be ready to help teachers who wanted to try out APL. Now that there is an APL that anyone can afford there are quite a number of teachers who would like to experiment. There is no list. The I-APL name and address list of 1400 people is waiting for the APL Association to exploit. What has been done? Nothing!

Somewhere the duties of the officers are written down and the Chairman is supposed to plan the diary and check that each member of the committee is doing/has done the necessary work in good time to achieve the Association’s aims. Plainly this is not happening at present.

I suggest that members who are able and willing to help with any of these things and feel as I do that help is plainly needed should write to or telephone the Chairman and offer.

Yours sincerely,

Anthony Camacho