Minutes of the BCS Fortran Specialist Group 2000 AGM

The 2000 Annual General Meeting of the British Computer Society Fortran Specialist Group was held at 11 Mansfield Street, London, at 11.15am on Thursday, 11th May 2000.

Present:
	David Briggs	DB Kinetic Systems
	Chris Lazou	HiPerCom Consultants Ltd
	Miles Ellis	University of Oxford
	David Muxworthy	University of Edinburgh
	Mike Pettipher	University of Manchester
	John Reid	JKR Associates
	John Young	AWE Blacknest (Chair)
	plus, for the afternoon session only:
	Ian Chivers	King's College, London
	Jane Sleightholme	King's College, London
	Henry Tillotson	University College, London

1. Apologies for absence:
Apologies for absence were received from Peter Crouch, Mike Delves, Steve Morgan and Lawrie Schonfelder.

2. Minutes of previous AGM:
The minutes of the previous AGM, held on 13th May 1999, were accepted as a correct record subject to the corrections of "7th May" to "13th May" in the first paragraph and of "Membership Secretary" to "Treasurer" in section 6. They were then signed by the Chairman.

3. Matters Arising:
Further to the first paragraph in section 9 of the minutes, John Young reported that the BCS Technical Board had agreed in principle that the Group could use funds to underwrite attendance at standards meetings; see also Treasurer's Report below. John Reid, as ISO Fortran convenor, has to attend meetings of WG5 and SC22 (usually one of each per year) for which he will be partially funded by the BSI-administered DTI support scheme. It was agreed that he should be able to claim from the FSG to recoup any deficit in reasonable out-of-pocket expenses.

Further to the second paragraph in section 9 of the minutes, it was noted that the proposed Fortran Forum had not taken place. Discussion was postponed to "Future Activities", below.

4. Chairman's Report:
The Chairman's annual report was tabled and read. He was warmly thanked for all his work for the Group in difficult circumstances and advised that his report had been unduly self- critical.

5. Membership Secretary's Report:
The Membership Secretary was not able have up to date figures on membership to hand at the meeting. [BCS HQ had distributed the agenda for the meeting to 220 people.]

6. Treasurer's Report:
The Treasurer presented draft accounts for the year as he felt that not all information was necessarily to hand. The draft accounts were accepted. The Group had three accounts: a Gold, a current, and an HQ account with total current assets of £3,006.17 at 30 April 2000.

John Young reported that the Group's request for an allocation of £1,130 for 2000/2001 had been successful. This budget was based on expenditure of £130 for the AGM (mailing and catering), £500 to support an event and £500 contingency to support the ISO Fortran Convenor. It was decided that again no charge should be made for the coming year for members of the Group who were not members of the BCS.

7. Revision of Constitution:
The Group's Constitution had first been adopted in 1992 but was now in need of revision, largely because of changes in BCS procedures. These included that the Specialist Groups Management Committee had been replaced by the Technical Board, that Specialist Group accounts no longer needed to be audited separately and that the Chairman and Treasurer of a group were required to be Fellows or Members of the BCS. It was decided that the quorum at the Group AGM should be five rather than seven members. Three text clarifications were also made. The proposed changes were agreed unanimously.

8. Mailbase and bcs-fsg e-mail list:
The e-mail list specific to the Group was set up at Mailbase in January 1997. It was a completely closed list so that members would know of its existence only if they were told explicitly. Approximately one third of Group members were also members of the email list. The secretary said that in an attempt to raise awareness he had recently added an open web page for the list at Mailbase, a side effect being that 'bcs-fsg' now appeared in the index of lists shown on entry to Mailbase. This meant that archives of mail send to the list could be read by the general public but the list was still closed in other respects. He asked for opinion on this change. It was agreed to continue in this mode. It was also agreed that members of the Group should be encouraged to join the list and that David Briggs should replace Miles Ellis as co-owner with the Secretary.

9. Future Activities:
The Fortran Forum proposed for 1999/2000 had not taken place due to lack of organizational resource. NAG did not propose to hold a Fortran Futures conference in 2000 as they had in 1996 and 1998 but they were willing to sponsor an event organized by the Group. It was also noted that BCS had a fund to support technical events which might be called on. It was suggested that a Forum should be narrowly focused and should concentrate on use of Fortran either in corporations or in education. The discussion was curtailed due to lack of time and it was left to the Group officers to pursue the matter after the meeting.

10. Election of Officers:
All the officers resigned and elections for new officers took place. Chris Lazou was proposed as Chairman by Miles Ellis, seconded by David Briggs and elected unanimously. John Young was proposed as Vice-Chairman by John Reid, seconded by David Briggs and elected unanimously. John Reid was proposed as Standards Officer by John Young, seconded by Miles Ellis and elected unanimously. The other office-bearers were unanimously re-elected en bloc. The officers for the year 2000/2001 are thus:

	Chairman	Chris Lazou
	Vice-Chairman	John Young
	Secretary	David Muxworthy
	Membership Secretary	David Briggs
	Treasurer	David Muxworthy
	Web Editor	Peter Crouch
	Standards Officer	John Reid

David Muxworthy was to continue as Archivist.

11. Any Other Business:
The retiring chairman was again thanked for all his work for the group.

12. Date of next Annual General Meeting (revised on 29/01/2001):
The 2001 Annual General Meeting will now be held on Wednesday, 16th May, 2001.

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