BAA AGM Minutes
Start 2.47pm
Chairman - Paul Grosvenor
Secretaries - James Greeley, Shaquil Sidiki, Sam Gutsell (The Three Blind Mice)
Been a relatively quiet year. Most activity in and around Vector, Phil Last hosted BAA London, a speech was given about using K to control a GPU.
There will be a meeting in two weeks’ time - no agenda as of yet. Andy Shiers asked Phil Last if they were having a meeting as Brian Becker will be over at some stage or another. Open agenda in two weeks’ time.
After the AGM John Scholes will be doing a talk.
Vector is running behind but John Jacob has a plan.
2.55pm Paul Grosvenor hands over to the treasurer Nicholas Small
There was an anonymous donation of £200
There was one edition of Vector this year and costs were £250 higher than the year before due to postal costs going up by a third.
Membership numbers have fallen ‘quite a lot’ about half the decline in membership from volume 24-25 he will chase them up shortly to encourage them to join. He asks if anyone knows about the Japan APL association as the editions of Vector were returned. Stephen Taylor said that the Japanese association was essentially defunct.
3.00 pm John Jacob
The next edition of Vector is about half way done. Optima have provided additional support from their new personal assistant Donna Scozzafava. Vector’s hosting has been changed and they now have control of the domain name.
John Jacob went on to talk about automating the process of converting the articles to pdf’s to be ready for print as well as making the markup easier. This should cut down on the amount of time it takes to put Vector together.
The meeting involved a discussion about having Vector produced in colour.
It surprised John Jacob how long it actually took to produce Vector (this came up at Christmas where a problem with the printers delayed the whole process by 3 weeks)
On the technical front John Jacob aims to iron out the whole process with automation to speed up the whole process so they will be able to produce Vector more regularly which will hopefully stimulate demand.
Paul Grosvenor - we've spoke about producing a electronic version of Vector for a long time. However many members prefer a physical copy.
Currently there are no restrictions to download from the archive however one member of the audience preferred it be for subscribers only.
3.07pm Back to Paul Grosvenor
Nicholas Small - votes that we keep the committee the same
Kai Jaeger - objectioned that Peter has not been here for 2 years!
Ray Cannon - Peter sent his apologies
Paul - will ask peter if he wants to carry on
Ray Cannon - He is happy to carry on but is happy to stand down if anyone else wants to start.
Paul Grosvenor - does anyone have any objections to the editor being part of committee
John Jacob was voted as part of the committee
Kai Jaeger - suggests the secretary should be removed entirely
Paul Grosvenor - It’s been agreed that the committee will stay the same (with the addition of Editor John Jacob)
AOB
- Memberships are declining as a whole - This is a general trend where people are reaching out to the internet and grabbing it from there, people are retiring but there is young blood (Three Blind Mice/Stephen Taylors apprentice)
- Morten - maybe we should put more pressure on some of Dyalog’s major customers - this could increase membership
- There are currently 3 corporate members of Vector; Sim Corp being one of them, subscribes to 10 copies, Paul remarked that it maybe worth asking as that is not many for such a large company.