Committee News & Annual Accounts

Transcribed from the printed issue; not yet reviewed. Read it in the PDF of the issue, page 13

British APL Association News
Secretary’s Report for 1991-92¶

by Anthony Camacho, Honorary Secretary, 19 May 1992

This is the Secretary’s selection of the interesting items that were dealt with in your committee this year. Intentionally omitted are such things as arranging meetings (they are reported fully elsewhere), settling budgets and reviewing expenditure, booking rooms, maintaining contact with the British Computer Society (your Chairman and Treasurer both attend meetings) and a good deal of regular work such as answering queries, protecting our copyrights and other administration. Also omitted apart from a mention are initiatives which have scarcely begun such as the schools educational initiative or the publicity initiatives arising from a meeting held by the publicity officer.

There were Committee meetings on 7 June 91, 20 September 91, 22 November 91, 14 February 92 and 1 May 92. There will be another on the morning of 12 June 92.

1. APL Conferences¶

We sponsored a Russian to attend APL 91. We did some preliminary investigation, visited York University, discussed arrangements and contacted conference organisers and are planning to hold APL 94 at York. A nucleus of a committee has been formed under Adrian Smith as conference Chairman and Peter Donnelly who will organise the exhibition.

A proposal has been sent to SigAPL inviting them to collaborate by not asking for financial sponsorship, which will not be necessary if we obtain approval for our plans from the BCS as our funds with them will be adequate. We have helped with publicity for APL 92 and we hope our reports on APL conferences encourage the world to attend.

At APL 91 Vin Grannell paid for video recordings to be made of several sessions. When we heard he had done this we contributed half his costs in return for copies of the tapes and some have already been shown at our meetings.

2. Administration¶

The Association acquired access to email by paying for the Secretary to join CIX (the email address is acamacho@cix.compulink.co.uk). Many items for Vector have been solicited and received by this route.

The Administrative Assistant, Alison Chatterton, who has served us so well for some years, resigned and her place was taken by two people: Rowena Small who does the membership records and Gill Smith who does the Vector work. The Royal Mail freepost licence was transferred to Rowena’s address.

The steps necessary to demonstrate that we comply with the Data Protection Act were taken and appropriate messages printed in Vector and on our membership forms.

The Association’s policy on payment of expenses was discussed, clarified and recorded in writing. The Association’s policy on membership records was changed. We now wish to hold a name and address for each APLer who is a member by virtue of working for a sustaining or corporate member. It is intended that the collection of the extra records will begin with the membership renewals for the year 1992/3.

3. Sponsorships¶

As well as sponsoring a Russian APLer at Stanford the Association has agreed to pay for the printing of the Russian edition of the I-APL Manual. We support the Regional Enterprise Grant Scheme proposal of Dr Ian Clark to write enhancements to the I-APL/Mac interpreter, and are considering a contribution towards sponsoring it.

The Association has continued to sponsor the APL Statistics Library with a conference at Gregynog, a presentation at APL 91 and the launch of the first part of the library at one of our meetings.

The outstanding achievement award is to be given to Paul Chapman in recognition of his achievement in writing the portable interpreter for I-APL. The presentation may be made at the AGM on 12 June 1992.

4. Publications¶

Vector is now fairly well established as the leading APL journal; it appears regularly and contains an excellent mix of articles from all over the world. For some time now it has been 144 pages or more instead of the 128 pages promised. It is the major expense and main activity of the Association as well as the main benefit to members. The committee has actively supported the Vector working group and done its best to ease their task. APLers (members or not) who feel they might write for it are encouraged to try their hand and to contact the Editor or one of the working group.

The Committee is currently considering suggestions that we might launch a Beginners’ Vector as part of Dr Mayer’s schools initiative. Also proposed is a fully refereed journal of high academic standard that might be called The Transactions of the APL Association. The title is provisional as if launched it will attract papers from the whole world as there is no other wholly refereed publisher of APL papers. Perhaps the title could reflect this.

Summary of Annual Accounts¶

Summary of income and expenditure/receipts and payments:¶

Assets summary:¶

Notes¶

1. Pence figures have been omitted, so columns may not add exactly.
2. Debtors are mainly advertising and subscriptions.
3. Creditors are mainly advance subscriptions, unpaid bills, and VAT.
4. The value of stocks of Vector and the Software Library have not been assessed.

Treasurer’s Remarks on the Annual Accounts.¶

In order to present a clearer picture of the Association’s finances, the presentation of the accounts has been changed from that used in the past.

Instead of showing just receipts and payments, i.e. what goes in and out of our bank account, there is shown also an income and expenditure accout for the year 1991/92, i.e. revenues strictly relating to the activities of that year.

The adjustments made to the receipts and payments figures to arrive at those for income and expenditure may be summarized as follows:

Most of the second of these items, expenditure attributable to 1990/91, relates to the cost of production and distribution of Vector 7.4, which was paid for in 1992, along with all four parts of volume 8.

This is a significant factor in the reduction of net assets, which had previously not allowed for the costs related to the fourth issue of the respective volume of Vector. Increased expenditure on projects, and a decline in bank interest account for most of the rest of the decline in net assets.