Minutes of the Open General Meeting of the BCTCS

• Alan Gibbons (Warwick) presented the Chairman's report.

• Iain Stewart (Swansea), as Treasurer, reported on the current state of the BCTCS accounts. It was noted that in the previous colloquia, the 9th BCTCS at York had broken even, and the 10th BCTCS at Bristol, had made a small profit of 275 pounds. Overall, there was a balance of 2,500 pounds present in the BCTCS account. It was decided that no immediate action should be taken as regards the use of this surplus. John Tucker (Swansea) noted its potential use as a safeguard with which to underwite future meetings.

• Election of Organising Committee and Officers. Iain Stewart, whose position as treausurer was not up for re-election, organised the nomination and voting procedure for the Organising Committee.

  • Alan Gibbons (proposed: John Tucker; seconded: Paul Dunne) was re-elected (nem. con.) as Chairman.

  • Paul Dunne (proposed: Steve Matthews; seconded: Chris Tofts) was re-elected (nem. con.) as Secretary.

  • Julian Bradfield (Edinburgh) (prop: Chris Tofts; second: Chris Holt) and John Stell (Keele) (prop: John Tucker; second: Chris Tofts) were elected as members of the organising committee; each receiving 11 votes in the list of 5 nominees.

  • It was agreed that the committee should, in future, include a Postgraduate student representative. Savita Chauhan (Swansea) (prop: Iain Stewart; second: Simon Thompson) was elected in this capacity, after gaining 9 votes to the 8 and 6 of the other two nonimees (Ida Pu and Martyn Amos, both Warwick)

  • The remaining committee members were confirmed as: Chris Tofts (Swansea, local organiser 1995); Simon Thompson (UKC, local organiser 1996); Mike Holcombe (co-opted; also Sheffield, local organiser 1997); and John Tucker (co-opted).

  • John Tucker proposed that the number of individuals serving on the committee continue to remain at 10.

• The possible dates for BCTCS 12 at UKC were reported. There was a brief discussion on the question of fixing the starting day of future meetings as a Tuesday; however, no agreed policy concerning this emerged.

• Two offers to host BCTCS 13 in 1997 were considered: one from Birmingham that had been communicated by FAX; the other from Sheffield, presented by Mike Holcombe. In the absence of full details of the Birmingham bid, it was agreed (nem. con.) that Sheffield would host BCTCS 13. The hope was expressed that Birmingham would be able to repeat their offer at a future date.

• Steve Matthews (Warwick) proposed the instigation of a WWW site dedicated to matters concerning BCTCS. After some discussion, Chris Tofts (Swansea) offered to investigate setting up such a site and to deal with its maintenance.