AGM and Election Results

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

Minutes of the 1989 AGM of the British APL Association, 21 April 1989 at the Royal Over-Seas League¶

Chairman: Peter Donnelly
Minutes: David Eastwood

The AGM opened at 14.05.

1. Minutes of the 1988 AGM¶

These appeared in Vector 5.1 and were approved by those present.

2. Chairman's Report.¶

The past year has been one of mixed fortunes for the BAA. There has been a lot of good work done by committee members and others, but poor administration has let us down time and time again.

APL89 in Canterbury was very well received, and an overall success. It was especially good to see so many visitors from abroad. On behalf of the BAA I would like to thank the APL89 committee - Dick Bowman, Christine McCree, Mel Chapman, Dave Parker and Phil Goacher for their efforts.

VECTOR continues to be an interesting high-quality technical magazine, but is more often late than on schedule; sometimes disastrously so. After the sad case of Vol.5 No.2 (dated November 1988 but published on 17 March 1989), the committee has resolved to make the timely publication of VECTOR a major target for next year. For many people VECTOR is THE reason for membership of the BAA. If members don't receive their VECTORs it is hardly surprising that they fail to renew their subscriptions. Despite these problems, I would like to extend my thanks to Adrian Smith and the other members of the VECTOR sub-committee who I know put in many long hours on our behalf.

The meetings this year have been of a consistently high standard thanks to Jonathan Martin. For me the talks on Artificial Intelligence, Parallel Processing, SQL and Function-Point Analysis have been both interesting and instructive; and illustrate a healthy trend away from APL insularity. The meeting devoted to Future Plans from the Vendors was also, I understand, well received. If there was an award for the most humorous APL talk of the year it would surely go to John Searle for his highly entertaining A-Z of APL at the meeting in March.

In stark contrast to the quality of the meetings has been the poor publicity for them. Although it would be wrong of me to divert blame from the committee, we have on several occasions been badly let down by the BCS who do our mailing. Despite the additional cost it would entail, the committee is considering the idea of doing our own mailing next year.

One of the disappointments expressed by Dick Bowman last year was the total lack of applications from members for funding. The BAA has considerable financial resources, and is anxious to spend money on worthy projects. I am pleased to report that this year David Eastwood has been busy with the APL Statistics User Group with a scheme to establish the APL statistics library. The BAA committee has given outline approval for the project and is awaiting firm proposals from the Statistics group. I understand that a mini conference to define objectives and discuss methodology etc. is planned for later this year. Alan Sykes, who is chairing the conference committee, would welcome interest from commercial users.

On the education front, Alan Sykes has been very active as the editor of Education Vector, and in generally promoting APL to universities and schools. Among other things, Alan has submitted articles for Teaching Statistics and has delivered a talk at the 1989 Mathematics Association conference. Alan is to be congratulated for his efforts.

Alison Chatterton has now taken over many of the routine administrative tasks of the BAA. In particular she has assumed responsibility for the maintenance of the membership list and for the production of mailing lists. The committee hopes that Alison will be able to help towards the timely production of VECTOR in the future.

APL scored a number of PR successes last year, in particular the article by John Samson in Computing which was at least partly the result of the efforts made by members of the committee. We also managed to get a reporter from Computing to cover one of our technical meetings; surely a first for the BAA.

Finally I would like to extend my personal thanks to our energetic Secretary Graham Parkhouse, whose hard work and enthusiasm have been an example for us all.

3. Treasurer's Report¶

The Treasurer, Phil Goacher, presented draft accounts for the year. The accounts have yet to be audited and approved by the BCS, and will thus appear in full in a subsequent issue of Vector.

The draft accounts showed a reduced membership income for the year, and the Treasurer commented that the membership appeared to have reverted to pre-APL '86 levels. Actual members at April 1989 were:

'Free' memberships were those organisations to whom we sent copies of Vector, usually overseas APL groups.

In answer to a question from the floor, the Treasurer could not identify any membership enquiries resulting from press coverage such as the articles which had appeared in Computing.

Other areas of the accounts showed reductions in expenditure in recruitment and publicity, tied to the level of activity in these areas. Vector activities showed an approximate £1,880 loss (against a £800 profit in the previous year). This was mainly due to including the costs of 'Education Vector' under the main Vector heading. The costs of mailing Education Vector were estimated at £1,200 by the Treasurer.

The late issue of Vectors 5.2 and 5.3 had meant that the BAA debtors were significantly increased. The Treasurer stated that the invoices outstanding included some £2,000 from APLication which he was confident could be collected and some £800 from Vector advertising which had only just been issued.

Overall, the BAA funds had increased during the year, helped by investment income.

4. Election of the 1989/90 Committee¶

Only one post had been contested - that of chairman. The results of the election were read by Phil Goacher.

2 spoiled papers

Peter Donnelly was therefore declared elected as the 1989/90 Chairman.

Other members were elected unopposed:

5. Any Other Business¶

Peter Donnelly announced that the 1989 Outstanding Achievement Award had been made to British Airways for their AIMS Management Information System. A formal presentation ceremony would be held at Heathrow. This ceremony would be open to interested members of the BAA, as well as the press.

The meeting closed at 14.45.