BCS Oxfordshire

Dear Oxfordshire Branch Member,

BCS Oxfordshire Branch – Chair’s Letter

Hello and welcome to our Branch membership on the 50th Anniversary of the BCS.

Welcome, particularly, to our new members and we look forward to seeing many of you at one of our Branch events where you can network with other members. Our attendance at meetings is ever-rising and a couple of times this year we have filled the lecture theatre to near-capacity.

Our programme embraced a wide range of topics: ‘Secure Mobile Use’, ‘Virus Protection’, ‘The Disappearance of Cash’, ‘Climate Prediction’, ‘Ruby on Rails’, a visit to Unipart, ‘London Congestion Charge’ and our Christmas lecture ‘The machine That Enjoys Christmas’. Reports of our talks are published on our website.

Thank you to our Web Master and every other Committee member for a super programme and website.

We are now in our third year of funding for Student Awards. This covers the three universities in Oxfordshire: Oxford Brookes, Cranfield and Oxford. Winners from previous years are on our website. The award to the Cranfield student was presented at the very grand graduation ceremony at Shrivenham.

Our Branch web competition for Oxfordshire schools was a resounding success with a record number of entries and pupils taking part. 148 Oxfordshire students in 45 teams entered from 19 schools. The Grand Prize Giving was at Cranfield University, Shrivenham on 20 June. The winners and entries are published on our website. Many of the entries are stunning and web masters in industry should not be too proud to look and find good ideas for their own sites.

Your Committee has worked hard again to create a sound, varied and interesting programme for the coming year. We want to provide a platform for topical issues or issues we think about to become so. You will see from the other side of this letter that our programme includes: Green IT, Identity Fraud, Second Life, a ‘Dragons’ Den’ (TV) style debate and an afternoon visit to the Defence Capability Centre at Shrivenham. More information is given on our website.

Just to remind you that we always finish our meetings with a trip to the Lamb & Flag in St Giles for a follow-up chat and a pint. Please do join us.

If you don’t meet up with us at the pub please use the contact form at www.oxon.bcs.org to give us feedback on what we are getting right or wrong. Do you like the new fold-out business card style programme? Should we continue with the yearly postal mailing? Do you like the eBCS Oxfordshire new style monthly email meeting reminder?
We are looking forward to another great year

Sheila Lloyd Lyons FBCS CITP
BCS Oxfordshire Branch – Chair
oxon.chair@bcs.org.uk

This letter, which was posted to branch members with the programme cards in August 2005, is also available as a 108KB PDF file.

Dear Member

May I take this opportunity to welcome you to the 2005/2006 programme from the Oxfordshire Branch of the BCS, and my third year as chairman of the branch. I am sure that this year will be another successful year, following from our successes of last year where we had 8 well attended branch meetings including our annual trip to the science museum Large Objects Store at Wroughton. My thanks go to the branch committee members who have worked hard to put together the new programme of events, which we hope you will enjoy.

The past year has also been successful for the BCS as a whole. The recent initiatives on membership benefits have increased our numbers by more than 30%. The BCS website (www.bcs.org) has details of all the new benefits available to members at each of the grades. Membership in Oxfordshire has also increased to more than 1000! A recent mailing from head office stated that "The BCS IS its membership", and as chairman of your branch, I am proud to be your interface to the BCS. Please let us know what you think and what you would like us to deliver to you in the future. This year we will see more membership initiatives from the society nationally.

You will notice from our programme card that we are planning to continue our partnership with the Oxford University Computer Society (OUCS), following the success of the debate last November. To know more about that debate, and all our other events last year, summaries are available on our website so you can catch-up on any meetings you were not able to attend and, where they are available, download versions of speakers’ slides.

June 2005 saw the prize giving of our third biennial web design competition for Oxfordshire schools. The competition has always been very popular, and this time was no exception. With entries from 28 teams, of even higher quality this year, the judging was very difficult. Congratulations to St. Birinus School, Abingdon School and Rush Common Primary School who won the top prizes, and also to all the other schools that entered. Prizes included PlayStation 2s, Apple iPod shuffles and multi media PCs. Our thanks to the event sponsors: Fox FM, RM, Focus Multimedia, Cranfield University and altoHiway. St. Birinus School was awarded the cup, along with a consultancy contract from the BCS to review the new website which is due for launch later this year. For more details of the competition, and all the prize winners and their websites, see http://www.oxon.bcs.org/webcomp.htm.

Adrian Walmsley has continued to develop the branch website, and has seen the introduction of a wiki which gives all members an open discussion area. Visit the wiki site if you would like to know more about this facility. Full details at www.oxon.bcs.org.

The branch committee is still strong and very active, working for the benefit of the branch and its members. I would like to take this opportunity to again express my thanks to two committee members and ex-chairmen who have decided to step down: Ted Murphy, who retired after over 30 years on the committee, and Neill Lawson-Smith. I would also like to welcome Stef Coetzee who joined the committee at the AGM. Details of all the committee members are available on the branch website.

We hope you enjoy our programme of events this year, and we would like to see some new faces along to the meetings. We are running this branch for your benefit, so we welcome any feedback you can give us and any suggestion for other events or activities we could pursue. I am particularly interested in hearing from the branch members whom we do not see often at branch meetings. I’d be interested to know what we could do differently to attract more of our members, and to give you more value for your membership. If there is anything at all, please use the contact form on the website, or e-mail me directly at oxon.chair(at)bcs.org.uk.

Eur Ing Robert G M Ward. CEng MBCS CITP MSc BSc (Hons)
BCS Oxfordshire Branch – Chairman
oxon.chair(at)bcs.org.uk

August 2003

Dear Member,

Welcome to the new programme for the 2003/2004 season of branch meetings.

This is my first year as Chairman of the branch, and I am looking forward to the challenges and duties that this role entails. I have been a member of the BCS for over 10 years and with the Oxfordshire Branch for the past 5. I would like to thank the new committee for helping me into this role, and for the help and support they will give me during my term as Chairman. I would also like to thank Geoff Stone, our retiring chairman, for the work he did during his term of office, and for taking on the role of Deputy Chairman, to assist me in my role. Full details of all the committee members are available on the branch website.

This year’s programme brings together a range of different topics, from the history of computing by the Computer Conservation Society to the latest technology with Real-Time computing at Wimbledon by IBM. We hope that the programme provides something of interest to all our members. Our meetings continue to be held at the Wolfson building, Oxford University.

We are following on from our recent successful ‘Meet the Committee’ evenings with Autumn and Spring Symposiums. The format of these social evenings will remain unchanged. The evening is an opportunity for networking and to talk with the committee and other members on a variety of topics. These meetings will continue to be held in the back room of the Lamb and Flag public house on St Giles, Oxford and are open to all members and non-members.

As you are aware, the BCS is proposing changes to the Governance and Membership structure. These changes are proposed to encourage an increased membership, and also to allow the society to grow stronger and more relevant in today’s rapidly changing environment. All full members have the right to vote on the changes, and I encourage everyone to take that right to ensure that the society is moved into a situation where it can prosper in our changing industry. Details of the EGM and the proposed changes are available at http://www.bcs.org/thewayforward [not any longer - Ed]. Members will be able to make postal votes, and details of this will be sent out nearer the time.

During the past year, we have had a popular series of presentations, with an excellent attendance to all meetings. The Schools Web Competition was another success, with all the children taking part having a good time, and enjoying the educational experience! We thank all our sponsors, without whom we would not have been able to run the competition. We hope to build on these successes in the coming years. We are always open to new members, and suggestions. If you would like to discuss any ideas, questions or advice, then I would encourage you to contact us by e-mail at committee (at) bcsoxon.org or by completing the form on our website at http://www.oxon.bcs.org/.

Meetings are available to both members and non-members, so we’d encourage you to display the calendar on the reverse of this letter, so that everyone can find out about the meetings. We look forward to meeting you during the coming year, and hope that you enjoy our programme of meetings.

Robert Ward
Chairman, BCS Oxfordshire Branch

Although the Oxfordshire Branch of the BCS has not had any official meetings over the Summer period. The branch committee has been working hard to put an interesting programme of talks together for the coming year. This years programme will commencing at 7:30pm on Thursday 13th September and will occur monthly through to May 2002. The first of these talks will be presented by Mr Matthew Ducey from CSC Ltd and looks at the shift from hoarding knowledge to sharing knowledge. It will also look at corporate knowledge management systems, of which CSC has been one of the few organizations to develop such a system.

For those with Internet access, I trust you have been able to review the Oxfordshire Branch Web Site, which has been updated using the new BCS logos. All the programme meetings are detailed on this Web Site, along with location information, which gives address, parking, map and directions to the branch meeting location. You may also wish to take the opportunity to visit the committee section of the Web Site to familiarise yourself with the 2001/2002 BCS Oxfordshire Branch committee members.

Looking toward the end of the year, I am already excited by the prospect of our special Christmas lecture, which will be presented by Professor Heinz Wolff. With over 40 years experience of giving public lectures this proves to be an interesting meeting. As this will be a popular event, entry will be by ticket only, details on how to obtain a ticket will be published on the Web Site in due course or alternatively you can contact the branch secretary.

The Oxfordshire Branch BCS presentations are open to members and none members of the BCS and are an ideal opportunity to meet and discuss computing issues with Information Technology professionals. I look forward to meeting new and familiar faces at the first branch meeting of this years programme of presentations on Thursday 13th September.

Peter Simpson
BCS Oxfordshire Branch Chairman 2001-2002