Minutes of the BCS Fortran Specialist Group 2001 AGM

The 2001 Annual General Meeting of the British Computer Society Fortran Specialist Group was held at 11 Mansfield Street, London, at 11.15am on Wednesday, 16th May 2001.

Present:
	John Appleyard	Polyhedron Software Ltd
	David Briggs	DB Kinetic Systems Ltd
	Peter Crouch	Nickel Development Institute
	Miles Ellis	Blue Chip Learning Ltd
	Mike Geary	NAG Ltd
	Chris Lazou	HiPerCom Consultants Ltd (Chairman)
	David Muxworthy	University of Edinburgh
	John Reid	JKR Associates
	John Young	AWE Blacknest

1. Apologies for absence:
Apologies for absence were received from Ian Chivers, Martin Harman and Carol Hewlett.

2. Minutes of previous AGM:
The minutes of the previous AGM, held on 11th May 2000, were accepted as a correct record subject to the substitution of "send the list" by "sent to the list" in section 8, sentence 5. They were then signed by the Chairman.

3. Matters Arising:
Further to section 7 of the minutes, Revision of the Constitution, section 3b of the Constitution now stated, "The Chairman of the Group is ex officio a member of the BCS Technical Board". However it had been pointed out that the Group could appoint any one of its officers to the Technical Board (which was itself about to be reconstituted) and that a substitute for the appointee could attend its meetings. It was agreed to revise section 3b to read: "The Group elects one of its officers to represent it on the BCS Technical Board".

In section 6 of the Constitution, the requirement that the Chairman submit a report on the Group's activities during the past year, together with the financial statement, had inadvertently been omitted. It was agreed to revise section 6f to read, "At the end of every financial year (30th April), the Chairman is responsible for making available to the BCS a report on the Group's activities during the year and a receipt and payments statement in respect of the Group's normal operations and special events, this financial statement to be included in the BCS annual accounts subject to audit by the BCS auditors".

4. Chairman's Report:
The chairman's annual report was tabled. The Chairman proposed to produce a newsletter publicising Fortran and including an interview with Dan Nagle, the new chairman of J3, who would be attending the WG5 meeting in London on 30 July to 3 August.

In connection with the WG5 meeting, it was decided that the social event to be hosted by the Group should take the form of a reception on the Monday evening to which all those attending the meeting and spouses or partners would be invited. There would also be an open invitation to Group members, giving an estimated total attendance of about 40. It would probably be held at the hotel recommended for those attending the meeting (Vencourt Hotel, Hammersmith). David Muxworthy was to arrange this.

The Chairman also drew attention to Programme 2000plus, which was intended to modernise and revitalise the BCS. The Technical Board would be changed under these proposals although the Group itself was not expected to be much affected. Three of those present had attended the BCS President's roadshow publicising the programme.

5. Membership Secretary's Report:
The membership secretary reported that there were 223 members on BCS HQ's list of Group members to whom paper mailings were sent; two of these were formal entries for BCS and IEE HQ. There were 89 addresses in the bcs-fsg e-mail list which included two individuals each having two different addresses. Only 62 people were on both lists, meaning that 161 members were not on the e-mail list. The secretary's appeal, distributed on paper in December 2000, asking members to enrol on the e-mail list had resulted in only five new people joining the list.

It was agreed that in the interests of rapid and cheap distribution of Group information, every effort should be made to enrol members on the e-mail list. The membership secretary would enrol all members whose e-mail address was known. It was thought that this did not infringe any data protection rights.

6. Treasurer's Report:
The treasurer presented accounts for the year; these were accepted. The Group had three accounts: a Gold and a current account with total assets of £3,184.77 at 30 April 2001, plus an HQ allowance for the financial year 2001/2002.

It was reported that the Group's request for an allocation of £1,745 for the current year had been successful, despite the sum representing a considerable increase on the previous year's allocation. The budget was based on proposed expenditure of £80 for the AGM (speakers' expenses and catering), £315 for stationery and postage, £800 both to support a promotional event and to host a social event at the ISO Fortran standards meeting in London in July 2001 and £550 to support the ISO Fortran Convenor's attending necessary meetings. It was already clear that the AGM costs were underestimated, as the film to tape conversion costs of £51 had not been anticipated. However, it was decided later in the meeting not to hold a promotional event during the 2001/2002 financial year (v. section 9 below).

7. Web Editor's Report:
The web editor's annual report was tabled. The editor said that there had been few comments about the Group's web site and he was unsure whether this implied that members were happy with the pages or whether they ignored them. He noted that adoption of the new BCS identity in June would cause revision of all the pages. It was pointed out that the content of some of the pages was out of date as it was implied that Fortran 90 was the most recent version of the language; it was agreed to pursue this.

8. BCS-FSG e-mail list:
It was reported that there had been only eight messages to the list in the past year. It was agreed that to raise awareness and to encourage use, the Web Editor should send a message to the list whenever new web pages were installed.

9. Future Activities:
The reception at the WG5 meeting was discussed under the Chairman's report.

It was confirmed that NAG had no plans to repeat the Fortran Futures events held in 1996 and 1998. It was thought that the most appropriate time to hold a promotional event for Fortran 200x would be on publication of the first Committee Draft, scheduled for August 2002. As this was relatively shortly after the next AGM, it was decided to set up a subgroup to plan the event; members were Miles Ellis, Mike Geary, Chris Lazou, David Muxworthy and John Reid. It was suggested that the UK producers of Fortran processors be asked to help sponsor the event and that the IEE be considered as a venue.

10. Election of Officers:
All the officers resigned and elections for new officers took place. Chris Lazou was proposed as Chairman by John Young and seconded by John Reid. John Young was proposed as Vice-Chairman by John Reid and seconded by Miles Ellis. David Muxworthy was proposed as Secretary/Treasurer by Miles Ellis and seconded by Peter Crouch. John Reid was proposed as Standards Officer by Miles Ellis and seconded by John Young. All were elected unanimously. The other office-bearers were unanimously re-elected en bloc. The officers for the year 2001/2002 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. Both Chris Lazou and David Muxworthy indicated that this would be their last year of office.

11. Date of next Annual General Meeting:
The 2002 Annual General Meeting will be held on Thursday, 16th May, 2002.

Comments on this or any other of the Group's pages should be sent by email to the FSG Web Editor.