The 2007 Annual General Meeting of the British Computer Society Fortran Specialist Group was held at 11.00 am on Thursday, 14^th June 2007.

Present:	Ian Chivers	Rhymney Consulting
	Peter Crouch	FSG Chairman
	Sam Ellis	Defence Equipment & Support (MoD)
	Mohini Hersom	Tiscali Network
	Ian Hounam	NAG Ltd.
	David Muxworthy	BSI Fortran convenor
	John Pelan	University College London
	John Reid	JKR Associates
	Jane Sleightholme	Kings College London
Afternoon only attendees
	Ian Clifton	Oxford University
	Chris Greenough	Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
	Steve Morgan	Liverpool University

(i). Apologies for absence:

Apologies for absence were received from Sammani D. Abdullahi (University of Qatar), Philip Kraven, Clive Page (Leicester University) and John Young (International Seismological Centre).

(ii). Minutes of previous AGM:

The minutes of the 2006 AGM were accepted as a correct record. The minutes were approved unanimously (proposed by John Reid, seconded by David Muxworthy).

(iii). Matters Arising:

(1) The JISC e-mail list still appeared to be alive - John Reid would attempt to rectify this again.

(2) Peter Crouch had intended to give a presentation to the Specialist Groups Assembly on Fortran to fit in with the 50th anniversaries of both the BCS and Fortran. Peter Crouch had discussed this with BCS but his offer had not been taken up.

(3) The possibility of using Fortran in the BCS programming competition was discussed again but no progress had been made since the last AGM and Sam Ellis would raise this with BCS again.

(iv). Chairman's Report:

The Chairman's report was tabled. He drew attention to a number of topics:
(1) As part of his efforts to promote Fortran an article had been produced and published in the November 2006 issue of the BCS ITNOW magazine.

(2) A major stir had been caused in both the Specialist Groups and Branches communities by the announcement by BCS HQ that SG and Branch reserve accounts were to be abolished. Further information would be provided under item (v) of the agenda.

(3) The long running saga of the fees payable by non-BCS members of the Group appeared to be at an end. Further information would be provided under item (vi) of the agenda.

In addition he provided information on two topics:
(1) In February 2007 Sarah Pounds of the BCS HQ Press Office had approached the chairman with a proposal regarding a newspaper article for publication in the regional press. An article had been written but it had not yet been published.

(2) At the BCS SG Assembly in October 2006 a proposal was made to remove the Specialist Group Executive Committee and replace it with a Knowledge Communities Board. This had generated a vast amount of discussion within the SG community. No decision regarding the Knowledge Communities appeared to be taken and it did not appear as if it would have any major affect on the Fortran SG.

The report was approved unanimously (proposed by Ian Chivers, seconded by Jane Sleightholme).

(v). Treasurer's Report and SG Development Fund Report:

The Treasurer gave a verbal report outlining the accounts for the year. The key points to note were:
(1) In March 2007 BCS HQ announced that SG and Branch reserve accounts were to be abolished. Further communications from BCS HQ put in place changes in the BCS Accounting Service for SGs. This appeared to be stem from a review of BCS financial systems by the new Vice President Member Services who sent a lengthy letter to SG Chairs and Treasurers to clarify the policy on BCS Funding. Essentially the general principle was that all expenditure during a financial year must be from a budget approved by the Trustee Board and SGs could not automatically call upon reserves they had generated. As the Fortran SG had received full support for its activities in recent years and had not needed to call on its reserves this did not appear to present any difficulties for the SG.

(2) A budget proposal for the SG had been put together in March 2007 and submitted to BCS HQ in April 2007. This had been returned with a request for further information regarding the travel budgets for the ISO SC22 Meetings in London and Las Vegas and requesting that the budget proposal be split between the Las Vegas meeting and other expenditure. The budget proposal had been amended and resubmitted with the split being between general support and support for standardization. This proposal went before the Specialist Groups Executive Committee in early June but, because the support for standardization was above the SGEC approval limit, it had to go to the MSB meeting on 12 June. At the time of the AGM no information had been forthcoming from BCS HQ as to whether the budget proposal had been accepted. (Note that the Treasurer received notification that the budget proposal had been accepted on the day after the AGM.)

The report was approved (proposed by Ian Chivers, seconded by David Muxworthy) with one abstention (John Reid).

David Muxworthy (in his role as BSI Fortran Convenor) presented a report on the Specialist Groups Development Fund in support of Fortran Standards. The report was primarily for BCS as most members of the committee already knew what had happened in regard to development of the new standard. On a financial note it was reported that BSI had waived the fee for IST 22 and this had helped with the SG budget.

The report was approved unanimously (proposed by Ian Chivers, seconded by David Muxworthy).

(vi). Membership Secretary's Report:

The Chairman had been trying to contact the Membership Secretary but had received no response. It was therefore assumed that the Membership Secretary no longer wished to be a member of the committee. The Chairman presented a report as acting Membership Secretary.

The most important point of the report covered the strategy of asking all the non-BCS members to join the Society as affiliates for a subscription of £25 per annum. A letter was being drafted and it was expected that it would be ready to post to the 112 non-BCS members in July.

The question of what members of the SG got out of membership was raised. There was a discussion area on the BCS site that purported to list membership benefits but otherwise there had been little response from the BCS.

The report was accepted unanimously (Proposed by John Reid, Seconded by Ian Chivers).

(vii). Web Editor's Report:

The Web Editor, Peter Crouch, presented his report for 2006-2007. The changes to the Society's main website mentioned in last year's minutes had not had any major effect on the Group's pages, only a few links had needed updating.

The report was accepted unanimously (proposed by Jane Sleightholme, seconded by David Muxworthy).

(viii). Election of Officers:

All the officers resigned and elections for new officers took place. There had been no nominations before the AGM and the following were unanimously elected (proposed by Ian Hounam, seconded by Mohini Hersom) for the year 2007/2008:

Chairman	Peter Crouch
Vice-Chairman	David Muxworthy
Secretary	Sam Ellis
Treasurer	Sam Ellis
Archivist	David Muxworthy
Standards Officer	John Reid
Membership Secretary	Peter Crouch
Web Editor	Peter Crouch
Committee Members	Ian Chivers John Pelan Jane Sleightholme John Young

(ix). Future activities of the Group:

The WG5 meeting was due to be held between Monday 6 August and Friday 10 August at the BCS London Offices with a reception to be held on the Monday evening in the Weston Room at King's College. At present 22 people have registered for the reception and the cost was £412.60, which was within the £420 budget.

(x). Any Other Business:

David Muxworthy reported that the National Museum of Computing may accept old manuals, etc. Anyone with any material of interest could contact Kevin Morrell through their website.

The subject of the boat trip for the WG5 meeting was raised by Jane Sleightholme. The trip could be organized to take place after a meeting finish at 16:00 and would not take too much out of the day. Jane also reported that she was pursuing the provision of internet access in the rooms at King's College.

(xi) Date of next Annual General Meeting:

The date of the next meeting was discussed and Thursday June 12th 2008 was agreed.

This concluded the formal AGM business and the meeting was closed.

After a break for lunch, a number of presentations were made:
(1) IBM's first FORTRAN film was shown. This was made in Poughkeepsie around 1958 and shows how FORTRAN could be used to program the calculation of compound interest.

(2) John Reid, ISO WG5 convenor, reviewed the content of the draft of the next Fortran standard.

(3) David Muxworthy, BSI Fortran convenor, presented a discussion paper on the draft of the next Fortran standard, which provided an introduction to the following discussion.

The presentations were followed by a discussion of the draft standard, lead by David Muxworthy, to help form the UK position for the meeting of WG5 in London on 6-10 August.

The Chairman thanked everyone for coming, in particular the speakers. He hoped that the meeting had been useful and that the reports would be posted on the website with the minutes.

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Last modified: Sun 9 Dec 2012 00:10:18