Dear Branch Member,

In this month's newsletter, details about our May meeting on Microsoft's Silverlight tool, which is also our branch AGM, pointers to other events and competitions you may be interested in, and a goodbye from your editor.

Would you consider joining the branch committee which will be elected at the AGM?

New committee members are always very welcome, particularly this year, as two of us are stepping down because of other commitments.

We work mostly by email, with occasional face-to-face meetings (often over delicious pints and pies). The role is not particularly onerous. You'd help with planning and running the meeting programme. You'd have a chance to make new contacts and find out more about and perhaps influence how the BCS works. Please get in touch using the feedback form on our website or come along to the AGM.

After the brief business of the Annual General Meeting, preceded as usual by a light cheese and wine buffet, Michael McClary from Microsoft's UK Digital Agency Team will tell us about Silverlight.

Silverlight is a free cross-browser, cross-platform runtime from Microsoft designed to deliver rich application experiences and high quality video to the desktop. Michael's talk will include many demos and real-world examples and discuss its position in a growing software and service world.

Can Microsoft take on the existing players in this important technology space? Come along and find out..

Apress, one of the world's leading technical publishers, are providing several relevant books as well as tokens for ebooks to be given away on the night. Preference will be given to people who are willing to write a short book review.

Judging is now under way. We will announce the results at the presentation on 24 June. See www.oxon.bcs.org/webcomp.

BCS is sponsoring the Royal Institution 2008 Christmas lecturer, Chris Bishop, for an interactive introduction to the exciting future of digital technology. How will we interact with computers? Will they be able to talk back or give advice? With explosions, liquid nitrogen superconductors, and mouse traps: expect loud bangs!

If you are, or know someone who is a student with Java skills, there is still time to enter the 2009 BCS Student Contest. The top prize, an Asus Eee PC, is for the best Four-in-a-Row strategy game. The contest runs until June 1st.

This year's branch visit to SophosLabs in Abingdon was so popular that all the places were taken within a few hours of our April eBCSOxon newletter going out.

We're sorry if you would have liked to come but didn't see the newsletter in time. We're hoping to arrange similar visits in the future. Keep watching the newsletters and the branch website.

The twelfth Oxford Geek Night is on 27 May 2009.

This is my last newsletter as your branch email co-ordinator. I've enjoyed the challenge of producing them, but I'm stepping down from the branch committee, with effect from the AGM in May, to concentrate on my new responsibilities in the BCS.

It's in the nature of these things that you don't get much feedback, so I'm grateful to the branch members who took the trouble to send comments, mostly very encouraging, on this newsletter format which we introduced in 2006.

Please welcome Gerry Rohling, who has agreed to take over as Branch Webmaster and email co-ordinator.

A fresh pair of eyes is always welcome. Gerry will be looking at the website and at these newsletters to see how they can be improved and whether they can be made easier to produce and maintain. Gerry would welcome ideas on the newsletter, the website and how we communicate with members. Use the feedback form on the branch website.

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

The 2009/10 programme is being worked on and will start in September. We plan to send details to all branch members and update the branch website around the end of August.

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.

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.