Dear branch member,

Welcome to our first branch newsletter of 2008.

We hope to see you at our meeting next week about IT at JET.
Please make a note in your diary for what promises to be a very interesting meeting in February on Second Life.
In March, we are planning a "What's Hot" participatory event with a chance to win cash prizes for the best idea. See below for how to take part.

This issue also includes news about the fifth Oxford Geek Night and events run by Science Oxford and the Oxford Internet Institute. A few of the events are in London, which we include because frequent links, such as the Oxford Tube with its on-board Wi-Fi, may make it a feasible proposition for Oxford-based members to attend evening meetings there.

The speaker at our January meeting, Sverker Griph, a Senior Software Engineer at MetaAgility Knowledge Engineering, was a section leader at JET in control and data acquisition. Under his leadership, since 2005 JET has begun to use the RDF language (from W3C) as a generic configuration language for data driven designs.

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.

The talk will also briefly cover how IT at JET is likely to influence IT at ITER, the next global fusion research project. Full abstract

For our February meeting, we take a look at virtual worlds and, in particular, Second Life.

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.

The fifth of the popular Oxford Geek Nights at the Jericho Tavern in Walton Street follows the normal format of two 15 minute keynotes interspersed with two sets of 5-minute-long microslot sessions.

Keynote speakers are Rufus Pollock, executive director of the Open Knowledge Foundation and Denise Wilton, creative director at Moo.

Do you think that you have the next great thing in IT and are dying to try it out on a supportive audience? We are looking for people to pitch their ideas on new technology or the application of technology and to answer questions from an expert panel.

At the end of the evening, there will be an audience vote and the winner will receive a cash prize.

If you think you might be interested in taking part, please use the simple form on our website to let us know. We'll contact you to discuss your idea and, if selected, help you to prepare for the evening.

This year's free BCS/IET Turing Lecture, "Target Earth" gives you a rare chance to hear renowned IT guru James Martin.

Dr James Martin founded the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilization at the University of Oxford. He has written 103 major textbooks - more than any other living person; was ranked 4th in Computer World's 25th Anniversary Edition's most influential people in computer technology; and is renowned as a riveting lecturer.

The lecture is preceded by a showing of his film, The Meaning of the 21st Century, narrated by Michael Douglas.

BCS members can now 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.