Dear branch member,

In this issue: details about our February meeting on Thursday this week, all about possibly the biggest RDF database on the planet, early information about our March meeting, and pointers to other events you may be interested in.

We do hope to see you at one of our meetings.

Those of our members who attended our 2007 Christmas lecture will remember Tom Ilube's talk on Identity Fraud and the measures his company, Garlik, is taking to help prevent it. In passing, Tom referred to the huge database of billions of RDF triples which underpins Garlik's Data Patrol service.

At our February meeting we will have the chance to hear from Christian Davis, Development Director & Steve Harris, Head of Architecture at Garlik about the design, architectural and development challenges involved in building such a highly scalable system, which powers qdos.com and foaf.qdos.com as well as garlik itself.

Note: I apologise that our previous email gave the wrong date (26 Feb) for this meeting.

With thanks to those who already completed the Oxfordshire Economic Observatory survey of labour mobility and networks of BCS members in the Oxfordshire branch, the closing date has been extended to give more of you a chance to win the £50 M&S voucher for a lucky entrant drawn at random from the completed questionnaires.

Any questions should be addressed to Professor Helen Lawton Smith, AcSS, Director of Research, Oxfordshire Economic Observatory, School of Geography & the Environment, Oxford University, Dyson Perrins Building, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3QY, Tel: 01865 766163, Fax: 01865 275885, http://oeo.geog.ox.ac.uk.

This year's BCS/RSI lecture will be given by renowned IT Futurologist Ian Pearson, who has been captivating audiences around the globe as he casts his eye into his crystal ball and uses his vast experience of technology and the internet to predict what is coming to a screen near you soon.

The lecture, which will be at the RSA, just off the Strand in London, is free to attend, but you need to book and there is a small charge if you wish to stay for refreshments after the lecture.

Now that the technology exists to bring online audio visual conferencing to the desktop, our March branch meeting will look at the benefits and implications for companies of all sizes. The speakers are Giorgio Bragoli & Neil Johnstone of DigitalMeeting.

Our full meeting programme for 2008/9 is on the branch website.

As usual, in late August 2008 we posted details to BCS members of the branch who live in the UK or mainland Europe. If you missed it, there's a pointer to a downloadable copy on our branch downloads page.

Did you know that BCS members can join up to five BCS Specialist Groups online?

Just sign on to the Members' secure area, and click on "Specialist Groups" in the box headed "Manage your membership". You should then be able to join several Specialist Groups.

The eleventh Oxford Geek Night is on 25 March 2009.

BCS members can manage all their BCS email subscriptions online by logging on at https://wam.bcs.org/wam/lsm.aspx.

Want to know more about this newsletter? There's an article on the branch wiki.

You can now subscribe to the text-only version of this newsletter. The BCS online interface doesn't support this option - see below for how to request it.