Dear Member
BCS Oxfordshire Branch – Chair’s Letter 2006/7
We, that is your Branch Committee, have thoroughly enjoyed running this year’s programme and, from the consistent number of familiar faces and good attendance at our meetings, I believe you – our members – have too.
We organised a varied programme with such diverse topics as: software testing, the web in its various guises, computer games and their platforms, computer crime, the ever present debate on open source and the growing use of VOIP.
I would like to warmly thank my Committee for their creativity and hard work in putting this programme together for us.
Our Committee is twelve strong but we would welcome new recruits as more members mean more activities, from which the whole of our Branch membership will benefit.
This year we have applied for three years funding for Student Awards. This covers the three Oxfordshire universities: Brookes, Cranfield and Oxford. The winning students get cheques for £125, a framed certificate and BCS membership. This has really gone down very well with both the universities and the winning students. A report and some photographs will be published on our website.
Our Webmaster does a grand job and I would encourage you to visit us on www.oxon.bcs.org. There is always something of interest to be found and you can use the feedback form to contact us.
Our champagne survey received 65 responses; a bottle of champers was raffled for anyone who filled in the survey. The results are on our website and there are some good suggestions which have been taken into account in planning next year’s programme which promises to be a lively one. A few trailers are:
- “The disappearance of cash – advances in payment technology”
- “Extending existing applications for secure mobile use – how tough can that be?”,
- Our Christmas Lecture “The Machine That Enjoys Christmas: Whither Machine Consciousness?” which will be given by Igor Aleksander, Professor of Neural Systems Engineering at Imperial College, author and broadcaster,
- “Ruby on Rails” – about this hot new highly productive open-source Web application development framework.
We will be running the bi-annual schools’ web competition and the prize giving for this will coincide with the BCS 50th Anniversary year in 2007.
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.
Sheila Lloyd Lyons BSc(Hons), MBA, MBCS, CITP
BCS Oxfordshire Branch – Chair
oxon.chair@bcs.org.uk
