Minutes of the Open General Meeting of the BCTCS

Opening: The meeting opened at 18.00.

Quorum: The meeting was recognised as quorate, there being present the President and Secretary of the BCTCS, a local organiser for BCTCS 25, and at least ten other members of the BCTCS.

Previous minutes: The minutes of the Open General Meeting held at BCTCS 24 in Durham were approved. The following matters were discussed:

• Applying for funding from the Learned Society and Knowledge Services Board (LS&KSB) of the BCS. Ursula Martin, as a member of the BCS LS&KSB, had agreed by email (21/04/08) after last year's meeting to submit a request on our behalf for funding for BCTCS as soon as a mechanism for applying for such support was formalised. There is still no evidence on the BCS web pages that such a mechanism has been formalised. However, BCS is in the process of recruiting a new director/chair for their LS&KSB board, so we will wait for the situation to stabilise before following up on this application.

• Writing to EPSRC with a proposal to widen the list of subject classifications within Fundamentals of Computing. Faron Moller discussed this issue with many participants of the BCS Visions conference. Senior members of the community are very supportive and are making noises, so hopefully things will progress without the need for a formal proposal from the BCTCS at the present time.

• Faron Moller attended the BCS Visions conference in London in September 2008, which featured seven Turing award winners as keynote speakers, together with a further seven invited speakers, and reported that all of these presentations were excellent.

President's statement: Faron Moller stated that he was very pleased with the number of participants (97), and thanks were conveyed to Artur Czumaj, Sara Kalvala, Steve Matthews, Haris Aziz and Anna Guszcza for their excellent work as local organisers. The President also reported that the LMS had once again generously provided support for the meeting, in the form of a sponsored international invited speaker (Noga Alon, Tel Aviv University). It is hoped that the LMS will continue this support in the future.

BCTCS constitution: Discussions have taken place to revise the constitution, with a view to BCTCS becoming a Society that people will join, and with additional activities beyond the annual meeting. A draft of a new constitution has been produced, in which the main changes are to broaden the scope to emphasise the role of BCTCS in the wider community, adding the role of Vice President, and the inclusion of a membership fee. Faron Moller will be inviting past presidents and committee members to be part of a review of this draft during the next few months, with a view to ratifying the new constitution at next year's meeting. He also invited any interested members to take part in this review by sending him an email registering their interest.

Rick Thomas queried how the membership would be increased, beyond people who attend the annual meeting. Faron Moller responded that there were plans to revamp the BCTCS web pages to include information about relevant research groups, research projects, funding calls, etc. This in itself would not increase membership, as the web pages would of course be publicly available, but the intention is to use this resource to help evolve BCTCS into a Society to which people in the community would feel a sense of belonging, and thus one which they would wish to support through membership.

Treasurer's Report: Stephan Reiff-Marganiec reported that the balance of the BCTCS bank account stands at 7165 pounds. Oxford submitted their accounts for BCTCS 23, and returned a surplus of 1408 pounds. Durham also submitted their accounts for BCTCS 24, showing that they broke even.

Elections:

• Postgraduate Student Representative. The President conveyed his thanks to Haris Aziz for serving in this role during the previous year. Liam O'Reilly from Swansea University was nominated for the role of incoming Postgraduate Student Representative by Mark New (Swansea) and was seconded by Matthew Gwynne (Swansea). Julian Gutierrez from the University of Edinburgh was also nominated for this role by Maria Teresa Llano (Heriot-Watt) and was seconded by Dominic Orchard (Oxford). Both candidates made a short statement, and a vote was then taken. As a result of this vote (O'Reilly: 13, Gutierrez: 21), Julian Gutierrez was elected.

Report on Arrangements for BCTCS 26: Julian Bradfield reported on the arrangements for BCTCS 26, which will be held at the University of Edinburgh. The plan is to hold the meeting in the new Informatics Forum, which is an excellent venue and provides free use of the lecturing facilities. Accommodation will be in Pollock halls.

The dates are not yet fixed, due to another event that has the facilities on hold at present, but these should be finalised soon. It is hoped that the total cost will be comparable with this year. In order to keep costs down, it is proposed not to provide lunches, with participants buying sandwiches from the many good shops within a few minutes walk, and returning to the venue to eat in order to maintain social cohesion. The programme of invited speakers will be put together over the next couple of months, in consultation with the BCTCS committee. As usual, the importance of maintaining a good balance of topics was noted.

Choice of Host for BCTCS 27: The committee will be working on the choice of host for BCTCS 27 over the coming months, and contacting a number of prospective host departments, e.g. Southampton, Birmingham, and King's College London. Plans are already ongoing regarding BCTCS 27, 28 and 29, in preparation for submitting the next EPSRC grant proposal, and in this regard the meeting granted the committee permission to take action on the choice of hosts for these three years. It was also noted that BCTCS is registered as a supporting organisation for the Turing Centenary in 2012, and that BCTCS 28 in 2012 is intended to be affiliated to the Centenary and hosted in a venue of relevance to Turing.

Any Other Business: None.

Closing: The meeting closed at 18.45.

Graham Hutton
Secretary, BCTCS