Venue: e-Research Centre, Oxford University, Keble Road
Date: 14 October 2010
Time: 19:40

Apologies for Absence
Gerry Rohling, Athar Majed, Chris Dawe

Minutes of Last Year’s AGM
The notes of last years meeting had been published on the Branch web site. No comments had been received, and there were no comments at the AGM. The minutes were therefore accepted as a true record of the event.

Chairman’s Report
The Chairman (Tim Lambertstock) welcomed the members to this year’s AGM, and noted that a summary of the Branch’s activities for the year was in the Chairman’s report published on the Branch web site.

We had had good attendance at last year’s events, and we hoped that we would better these this year as we had a strong programme.

In response to feedback from members, we had introduced sandwiches at our meetings starting at the beginning of this year. This initiative had been well received as many people came straight from work. The additional cost of this is offset by the fact that we have done a very limited paper mailing this year. As usual our programme is available on the web site and we will be sending around reminder e-mails.

As always, we would like to hear from our members, so the Chairman asked people to contact the committee either via the web site or directly if they had any ideas for improving Branch activities. We are hoping to introduce new ways of soliciting input from the Branch, and options are currently under review.

Treasurer’s Report
The Treasurer (Tony Cox) summarised the Treasurer’s Report. He noted that these were provisional figures as the accounts had yet to be audited.

Stationary and Postage will reduce next year as we are no longer doing a physical mailing.

The Branch allocation has been frozen at a similar amount to last year.

The Treasurer’s Report was accepted without comment.

The Chairman thanked Tony for doing such a good job as treasurer, and making sure that we worked within our budget. He noted that many Branches under spend quite significantly which makes overall budgeting for the BCS difficult. However we are always realistic in our budgets and endeavour to come in on target.

Election of Committee
The Secretary (Brian Day) noted that all but one of the existing committee had volunteered to continue. The continuing committee is shown below.

In addition we had two new volunteers to join the committee:

There being no other nominations, or objections the committee was constituted as above.

The election of Officers and allocation of Committee responsibilities will be ratified at the first meeting of the new committee.

The Chairman thanked all the committee for their hard work during the last year.

AOB
There being no further business, the AGM was closed at 19:50.

After this, Graham Cluley, Sophos, gave an extremely interesting session on “Web 2 Woe: Cybercrime on Social Networks”. This generated considerable discussion, and was very well received.

Brian Day, BSc PhD CEng CSci MBCS CITP
Branch Secretary
Oxfordshire Branch

What’s Hot?

Three speakers presented their ideas for new technology applications: an easy to use web presence for takeaway restaurants, a communications gadget for tour groups, and an advertising-funded service providing email and web calendaring for local clubs and societies.

Presenters were questioned by the audience and by our distinguished expert panellists, Dr Jan Hruska, co-founder and Director of Sophos, Eileen Modral, who manages the Oxford Investment Opportunity Network (OION), Jeff Barr, Senior Manager of Web Services Evangelism with Amazon, and branch webmaster Adrian Walmsley.

When the audience voted at the end of the evening, only two votes separated the three contenders. The winner was David Langer for groupspaces.

IT at JET – A Challenging Fusion Research Environment

Our January speaker, Sverker Griph, gave us a brief rundown of the history of fission and fusion, starting with the failed physics teacher, working in the Bern patent office, who published four ground-breaking papers in 1905 and introduced e=mc**2 to the world.

JET was set up to pursue the goal of clean electricity from nuclear fusion. It provides many challenges: for the IT people the huge amount of data which the experiments generate in a very short time, and for the national grid the challenge of handling a sudden demand for up to 1.2GW to power the experiment.

Open Evening at Science Oxford

The 7th of November was a showcase night for the Oxford branch of the British Computer Society on its 50th anniversary year, 2007.

A stunning venue of Science Oxford was used to promote the services that the BCS offers both its members and non members. Wine and Millets farm cheese was on offer to refresh our guests.

The venue offered 2 rooms, a presentation room which was manned by committee members offering information and advice to those who sought to find out more about the BCS. Lots of leaflets and other information packs were available along with some fun BCS 50th branded items for our guests to take home.
Meanwhile upstairs in Hands on guests were toying over the puzzles and exhibits on offer from 8 till 9 p.m.

Many mini competitions and quizzes were held over the evening. These included a facts based quiz for the visitors to hands on and a wine tasting quiz in the main presentation room.

Come the end of the evening at 9 p.m prizes were given out for participants. Seven BCS branded carry bags were won by those who scored highly in the ‘Hands on’ quiz. A BCS branded Cross pen set was won in a BCS knockout quiz. Theatre Vouchers were won by the luck of Bingo balls and we presented the winner of the wine tasting competition with a wine tasting guide CD.

In total near 50 people attended with a spread of members, non members and a good presence from our YPG membership. Lots of fun was had by all, not least the organisers and we wish to thank our membership for a wonderful 50 years and hope we continue to go from strength to strength.