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
