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Minutes of the Annual General Meeting of the British APL Association 1998

The Meeting opened at 1.30 pm on 22 May 1998

1. The minutes of the last AGM, which were published in Vector 14.1, were taken as read.
2. The chairman reported on the year. There had been a problem when the Editor of Vector was overloaded but we now appear to be over it.
   The Association is financially sound. The membership is dropping – very slowly, it is true – but members should all try to increase it. A larger membership would be beneficial to all. He concluded by thanking the people who had been particularly helpful to the Association this year.
3. No other member of the committee wished to make a report, and there were no questions anyone wished to ask of committee members.
4. The Treasurer circulated copies of the accounts and these were accepted without question.
5. The Treasurer proposed and the Chairman seconded the motion that John Sullivan be appointed auditor for next year. John indicated that he was willing and was appointed nem con.
6. The Chairman announced the Committee for 1998-1999 would be:
   • Chairman – Anthony Camacho
   • Secretary – Ajay Askoolum
   • Treasurer – Nicholas Small (co-opted)
   • Editor – Vacancy
   • Projects & Publicity – Dr Alan Mayer
   • Activities – Jon Sandles
   • Webmaster – Ray Cannon
7. The meeting was asked whether anyone wished to raise any other business. No-one did so the Chairman declared the meeting over at 1.55 pm
8. The AGM was attended by 18 people including the Committee.

Chairman’s Report on the BAA Year 1997/8

The main benefit we provide to our members is Vector, which for fourteen years has been the best APL journal in the world. We would like to hold more meetings, such as the vendor forum this afternoon, but not many members have been keen to attend or to help organise them and so this is the first meeting since the last AGM. Furthermore we have had prospective speakers, that you might have liked to hear, refuse our offer of a platform on the grounds that the number of people we could expect to sit and listen was too few to justify the effort. You may hear about more meetings from Jon Sandles.

The Chairman’s job is to hold things together when there are difficulties and we have had some difficulties; my efforts at holding things together were begun rather late because of problems at home, but I believe things are running well again now. I had better explain.

Duncan found he had taken on too much and that being Editor of Vector could not be combined with a new baby. I realised this and did not call the working group together to help out as soon as I should have done. This was because my mother, who is 86, fell down stairs last October and fractured her skull, requiring me to visit her in a Hastings hospital every week-end for a month or so and then my wife broke her ankle on 18 November which more or less prevented the two of us travelling any great distance until the plaster came off in January. It was thus not until 20 January that I started to get a meeting together and we actually met on 7 February. It is a tribute to the Vector working group that we have recovered so well since then.

We have published the October Vector and the January Vector; the April Vector has gone to press with Stefano Lanzavecchia as guest editor and will be given to every delegate at APL 98 and the July Vector, with reports of this meeting and of APL 98 in Rome will be published as soon as we can after the conference reports have been edited – probably early in August. We intend to publish the October Vector this year on time and to keep to schedule from then on. One consequence of the delay has been that this year there have only been three Vectors to pay for instead of four so our accounts look good.

As reported in Vector 14.1, the Committee decided to stop sending out the 16 page section of Vector known as The Education Vector to the I-APL mailing list. All were agreed that it was no longer doing any significant good in promoting APL in Education. This has also significantly reduced our expenditure. We would be glad to take any educational initiatives that we can find volunteers to help with, but at present we have no proposals.

Membership continues to reduce, slowly it is true, but the trend is a long standing one. The number of Vectors we send out is currently 22 less than it was last year and the number of individual members is seven less than it was this time last year. Nearly 60% of our members live abroad. The administrative assistant's report on membership will be printed in full in Vector so anyone who is interested can see the details.

We are going to send a recent Vector to all those who have failed to renew their membership in the last two or three years with a message asking them to renew. I would also urge all members to encourage someone new to join. We welcomed 33 new members in the year and if each individual member were to recruit a new member next year we would welcome nearly 400 instead of 33. A larger membership might enable us to hold well attended meetings, would improve the incentive to write for Vector and maybe would stimulate new activities. It is strongly in your interests to encourage the APL Association to grow.

The Association owes its thanks to the people who have helped us this year:

1. the members of the committee, in particular Ajay Askoolum, our secretary, and Nicholas Small, our Treasurer, and Jon Sandles for organising this afternoon’s meeting;
2. the Vector working group, in particular Stefano Lanzavecchia for editing 14.4, Richard Weber & family for hosting two Vector meetings and Adrian Smith for the extra work he has had to do coping with changes of editor and a guest editor who lives abroad;
3. all the authors who have written for Vector and
4. our two administrative assistants, Rowena Small (membership) and Gill Smith (Vector). I discovered that the rate of pay for the job had not been changed since the jobs were created and so this year their pay was increased to £10 an hour.

Anthony Camacho, 21 May 1998

Administrative Assistant’s report on membership

Membership at 30.4.97 (previous year’s figures in brackets)

Total Vectors 687 (709)

* These figures together make the total subscribed for by UK Corporate members.

NB: Renewal notices for November and February went out late (10 people not yet renewed).

New members

We have a new corporate member for 1998/99 – Medilab, Denmark.

Copyright © 1998 British APL Association