This page shows the branch's meeting programme for the 2007/8 academic year.

Come back to this page from time to time to confirm dates and times, and to check for amendments to the programme and more details on some of the sessions as they become available.

Programme Summary

27 September 2007	How Green is IT?
Wednesday 24 October 2007	The Vision & Reality of Access Grid and How it Can Save the Planet
7 November 2007	BCS Evening at Science Oxford
Tuesday 27 November 2007	Identity Fraud - From Criminals to Consumers (Note date change)
24 January 2008	IT at JET - A Challenging Fusion Research Environment
21 February 2008	How Big Business learned to love Virtual Worlds
13 March 2008	What's Hot
24 April 2008	Annual Branch Visit: Technology in Action - Shrivenham
22 May 2008	Education in the Internet Age and Branch AGM
Attendance	Unless stated otherwise, all our meetings and events are held on Thursday evenings and are open to the public without charge. Except for special events or rare meetings which are expected to be heavily oversubscribed, there is no need to book: just turn up on the night. When booking is required, it will be made clear on this page and on the monthly emails which we send to people on our mailing list.

We hope that you will enjoy the range of topics to be covered. If there are other subjects you'd like to hear about, it's never too soon to start thinking about next year. Just drop us a note using the contact form.

Following our usual practice, we will send email reminders to each branch member of record between one and two weeks before each meeting.
Any unavoidable changes to the programme will be advertised on this page and notified to members by email.

We reviewed the wording of our meeting reminders in the light of the EU Directive on Electronic Communications (which came into force in the UK on 11 December 2003) and now include a clear explanation of why individuals are receiving the message and how to unsubscribe.

Programme details are posted to branch members in late August. If, after allowing for postal delays, you didn't receive yours, please let us know using the contact form.

Programme Detail

How Green is IT?

Date	27 September 2007
Time	19:30 (Cheese and Wine buffet from 19:00)
Location	Oxford e-Research Centre, 6 Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3QG ..Directions and Map
Calendar Entry	Download this iCal file: depending on your browser settings, your calendar may launch automatically, otherwise double click to add the meeting to your Outlook diary. Procedure may differ for other Calendar tools.
Meeting Summary	On the reports page
Speakers	Zahl Limbuwala and/or Liam Newcombe. Zahl is the chair and Liam is the secretary of the newly formed BCS Data Centre Specialist Group. 25 Sep: it was confirmed today that the speaker will be Liam Newcombe.

Abstract: Rising demand for IT services is driving demand for data centre capacity, in response to this many companies have replaced old servers with physically smaller servers or blades, only to discover that their capacity limits are power and cooling, not physical space. These internal issues are compounded by the lack of availability of additional power in many locations.

The falling prices of server hardware have created an illusion of falling operational costs which is belied by the rising power demand and power density. The cost of a server is now matched by its lifetime power cost, the cost of the Data Centre infrastructure required to power and cool the server substantially exceeds both put together. The only way for a business to effectively plan an IT strategy and choose appropriate IT hardware is to understand the overall cost of housing, powering and cooling that equipment.

There is no shortage of solutions being offered to IT and Data Centre operators, from virtualisation to rack-side cooling but little assistance in understanding what real environmental and cost benefits these might provide you in your Data Centre, delivering your IT loads.

The Data Centre Specialist Group has developed a model to analyse and forecast the integrated IT and M&E energy and financial costs of purchasing, maintaining, powering and cooling different types of server. This model demonstrates that choosing servers based on price or price/performance is the wrong strategy. The performance per Watt and rated power of the server are the key metrics for lifecycle cost and should, therefore be used to select equipment. The model is also able to effectively forecast the carbon and cost benefits of migrating to a virtualised or grid environment, allowing effective analysis of when and if you will see the ROI.

Liam will present an overview of these issues and how the DCSG model might be used to help businesses get a handle on their rising cost base.

See also the DCSG's document repository.

OneClick are sponsoring this event with wine, cheese, demo models and a special discount on their products valid for one month from the meeting.

OneClick Technologies is a UK-based start-up company borne out of the realisation that vast quantities of electricity - and hence carbon dioxide emissions from power stations, which are blamed for climate change - are being wasted through electrical leakage from a multitude of sources. The two biggest culprits have been identified as computers and audiovisual (AV) systems. OneClick will offer a range of intelligent products that reduce electrical waste, helping to conserve the Earth's resources while, as a welcome side benefit, saving money on fuel bills for both households and businesses.

Discount info: The discount, which was valid for one month from the meeting, has now ended.

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The Vision & Reality of Access Grid and How it Can Save the Planet

Date	Wednesday 24 October 2007
Time	19:00 (Tea and Coffee from 18:30) Note earlier start than usual
BCS Oxfordshire Location 1	OERC eScience Centre which is adjacent to our normal venue at theOxford e-Research Centre, 6 Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3QG ..Directions and Map Please use the entrance on number 6 Keble road. This will take you directly into the atrium where tea/coffee will be available. We will make sure there are enough signs around so no-one should get lost.
BCS Oxfordshire Location 2	Building R1, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, Didcot, Oxon, OX11 OQX ..Directions and maps You should ask for directions to building R1 at the gate to the site, and as it's a large site, you should allow some time to find the meeting venue. Security: There is no charge for this meeting but because of limited space at the venues and security requirements at RAL, you need to tell us via the contact form which venue you plan to come to. You may be asked for some form of identification at RAL.
Other Locations	Daresbury Lab (two rooms) and Bangor University Please see the Chester & North Wales branch website for instructions.
Calendar Entry	Download this iCal file depending on your browser settings, your calendar may launch automatically, otherwise double click to add the meeting to your Outlook diary. Procedure may differ for other Calendar tools.
Meeting Summary	On the reports page
Speaker	Michael Daw, Head of the UK Access Grid Support Centre, University of Manchester

Abstract: Access Grid is an advanced collaboration environment that has been described as "videoconferencing on steroids". It can support a huge number of sites interacting simultaneously with an emphasis on effective distributed collaboration between groups. It was invented in 1997 in order to provide a human interface to the Grid and continues to be an accessible route to Grid technologies.

There are over a hundred Access Grid nodes across UK academia and thousands of users worldwide. This talk will look at the technology in more detail and consider the divergence between the inventors' vision of Access Grid and the reality of its implementation illustrated by use cases in science, social science and the arts and consider (briefly) the possible role of videoconferencing-type technologies in a low-carbon future.

This is a Joint Session with Chester & North Wales branch, linking Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and Daresbury Laboratory, NEWI (Wrexham) and Bangor University.

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BCS Showcase Evening at Science Oxford

Date	Wednesday 7 November 2007
Time	19:30
Location	Science Oxford, 1-5 London Place, Oxford OX4 1BD ..Directions and Map
Calendar Entry	Download this iCal file: depending on your browser settings, your calendar may launch automatically, otherwise double click to add the meeting to your Outlook diary. Procedure may differ for other Calendar tools.

BCS Oxfordshire is hosting a free evening to celebrate our 50th anniversary. We will be showcasing many of our services and achievements and having some fun at the same time. Games and prizes will be on offer. Food will be locally sourced from Millets Farm shop with a selection of Wines and fruit juices also available. This event is open to non-members and members alike and we would particularly welcome younger members or those who are not currently members but who are working in or studying IT.

We have exclusive use of the exhibition space and "Hands on" exhibition at Science Oxford. This event is an opportunity to provide feedback on what our members and potential members would like from the BCS as well as a chance for you to find out what we already do for our membership, with a focus on young professionals and the BCS Young Professionals Group (YPG). We are especially eager to meet current YPG members or potential members: our aim is to find out what you want from the BCS now and in the future. This is your chance to network with our branch members and meet your Committee. There'll be raffles and mini quizzes during the evening with various prizes.

See the poster and event description for more details.

Identity Fraud - From Criminals to Consumers

Date	Tuesday 27 November 2007 (date change)
Time	19:30 (Tea and Coffee from 19:00)
Location	Oxford e-Research Centre, 6 Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3QG ..Directions and Map
Calendar Entry	Download this iCal file: depending on your browser settings, your calendar may launch automatically, otherwise double click to add the meeting to your Outlook diary. Procedure may differ for other Calendar tools.
Meeting Summary	On the reports page
Speaker	Tom Ilube is CEO of Garlik (www.garlik.com), an online consumer company pioneering a range of services to help give people real power over their personal information in the digital world, using semantic web technologies. Garlik's first product, Data Patrol, is aimed at reducing the risk of identity theft, one of the UK's fastest growing crimes. Until recently Tom Ilube was Chief Information Officer of the world's largest pure online bank, Egg plc and a member of the Executive Committee. In 2005 Tom left Egg to found Garlik, in partnership with Mike Harris, the Founding CEO of Egg and Professor Nigel Shadbolt of Southampton University. Garlik's advisory board includes Professor Wendy Hall and Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web.

This presentation will explore the rapidly emerging wave of identity theft hitting Britain, with over 130,000 incidents a year, and the impact on individual consumers. Looking at this emerging challenge from the consumer perspective, Tom will base his talk on research conducted with consumers, to understand their attitude towards their own personal information and with interviews conducted by leading criminologists, 1871 Ltd, with over 100 fraudsters to try to gain an insight into what they are actually doing and why they are doing it.

Garlik is one of the first consumer companies to use semantic web technologies on a large scale and Tom will explain why Garlik adopted semantic web technologies and how they are being used in practice.

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IT at JET - A Challenging Fusion Research Environment

Date	Thursday 24 January 2008
Time	19:30 (Tea and Coffee from 19:00)
Location	Oxford e-Research Centre, 6 Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3QG ..Directions and Map
Calendar Entry	Download this iCal file: depending on your browser settings, your calendar may launch automatically, otherwise double click to add the meeting to your Outlook diary. Procedure may differ for other Calendar tools.
Meeting Summary	On the reports page
Speaker	Sverker Griph, Senior Software Engineer at MetaAgility Knowledge Engineering. Sverker began with computing in 1971 as a medical research student in Uppsala, Sweden. Initially he worked on scientific applications and realtime interfacing of instrumentation. In the early 80s Sverker worked among other things on resource contention and scheduling problems in realtime operating systems. In 1983 he identified the 'priority inversion' realtime scheduling problem and implemented a recursive solution to it. In 1985 he was recruited to JET as a realtime operating system specialist. In 1990, when JET began to migrate its control and data acquisition systems to UNIX, Sverker worked as a software project leader. During the 90s he also implemented embedded realtime systems and micro-processor emulators in software for the Swedish industry using data driven frameworks of his own design. During the last decade he has been section leader at JET in control and data acquisition. During this period the data driven design concept has been developed at JET into a generic implementation methodology for high performance applications. It uses a data driven framework, which dynamically loads software components and supports third party linking compatible with high performance realtime. Also under Sverker's leadership, JET has since 2005 begun to use the RDF language (from W3C) as a generic configuration language for data driven designs. Sverker is also a strong proponent for the use of RDF as generic language for formal representation of knowledge in general.

The fusion research environment at JET provides many IT challenges. A mission critical real-time IT system - with high complexity and flexibility - needs to be sustained over decades, while subject to a high rate of change. These challenges are for example addressed by

• selective adoption of and longterm ownership of IT standards,
• extensive use of data driven design,
• a pervasive use of IT engineering databases and
• an in-house high performance software component architecture.

More details at http://www.metaagility.com/OPEN/bcs_talk_proposal.html

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How Big Business learned to love Virtual Worlds

Date	Thursday 21 February 2008
Time	19:30 (Tea and Coffee from 19:00)
Location	Oxford e-Research Centre, 6 Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3QG ..Directions and Map
Calendar Entry	Download this iCal file: depending on your browser settings, your calendar may launch automatically, otherwise double click to add the meeting to your Outlook diary. Procedure may differ for other Calendar tools.
Meeting Summary	On the reports page
Speaker	Roo Reynolds is a Metaverse Evangelist based at IBM's Hursley Park laboratory in the UK and is part of a team which facilitates the use of Virtual Worlds within IBM. All of this work is made all the more enjoyable thanks to a large world-wide community who are learning to collaborate and get things done in totally new ways. He enjoys exploring and building in the metaverse that is Second Life, uploading his photos to Flickr, keeping his bookmarks on del.icio.us, updating his playlist on Last FM tracking his location on Plazes and what he is doing on Twitter, as well as indulging in any number of other bleeding-edge alpha geek social software type activities. Roo is married to an artist, who tries her hardest to keep him balanced. As well as writing on rooreynolds.com he also contributes to eightbar.co.uk, an external IBM group blog.

Abstract: IBM has long been recognised as an interested player in virtual worlds. Roo Reynolds will share how a handful of brave IBMers first began a foray into Second Life and other virtual worlds, and how this grass-roots interest became widespread adoption within the company. What can a corporation expect from getting involved in a virtual world? What about an employee? Expect a lively tour of what's interesting in this space, together with some real-world examples of what's virtually possible.

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What's Hot

Date	Thursday 13 March 2008
Time	19:00 for 19:30.
Location	Oxford e-Research Centre, 6 Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3QG ..Directions and Map
Calendar Entry	Download this iCal file: depending on your browser settings, your calendar may launch automatically, otherwise double click to add the meeting to your Outlook diary. Procedure may differ for other Calendar tools.
Competitors/Panellists	Watch this space
Meeting Summary	On the reports page

Introduction: We will look at a number of emerging technologies and innovative applications of IT. Inspired by the BBC TV programme "Dragons' Den", a guest panel of senior industry experts and entrepreneurs will question each presenter.

There will also be time for our expert panellists, who include Jeff Barr, Senior Manager of Web Services Evangelism with Amazon. Like our February speaker, Jeff has been using Second Life as a communications tool and gave Amazon's first ever Web Services presentation in Second Life eighteen months ago.

At the end of the evening, the audience will be invited to vote for its favourite. A cash prize of £100 will be awarded to the winner!

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Annual Branch Visit: Technology in Action - Shrivenham

Date	Thursday 24 April 2008
Time	13:00
Location	Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, Shrivenham Campus ..Directions and Map
Calendar Entry	Download this iCal file: depending on your browser settings, your calendar may launch automatically, otherwise double click to add the meeting to your Outlook diary. Procedure may differ for other Calendar tools.
Meeting Summary	On the reports page

This year's branch trip is an afternoon visit to the Defence Capability Centre at the Defence Academy in Shrivenham.

We will have a guided tour which includes the Tank Shed and the Aviation Shed, and we'll hear about the use of technology by the armed forces, from tanks, armoured vehicles and aircraft.

There is a splendid museum: it's not every day that you have a chance to climb inside an attack helicopter or armoured fighting vehicles of various kinds.

The tour of the museum with its military hardware and vehicles is always a very popular feature of our biennial Oxfordshire Schools Web Competition prizegiving event, so we are delighted that Branch members will also have the opportunity to explore the exhibits.

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Education in the Internet Age and Branch AGM

Date	Thursday 22 May 2008
Time	19:30 (Cheese and Wine buffet from 19:00)
Location	Oxford e-Research Centre, 6 Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3QG ..Directions and Map
Calendar Entry	Download this iCal file: depending on your browser settings, your calendar may launch automatically, otherwise double click to add the meeting to your Outlook diary. Procedure may differ for other Calendar tools.
Meeting Visuals	This freemind diagram
Speaker	Mark Chamberlain, learning platform business manager at RM

After the business of the Annual General Meeting, preceded as usual by a light cheese and wine buffet, Mark Chamberlain will discuss Education in the Internet Age.

Children are now living in a fully accessible, high availability and high speed internet society. To adapt to this new age schools must be ready to embrace IT and offer services to all of its participants - the teachers, school staff, pupils and parents. This presentation will discuss the needs of a modern school before showing examples of how RM is embracing some of those needs with its Learning Platforms suite of products.

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