Minutes of the BCS Fortran Specialist Group AGM 2010

Held at BCS London Office, First Floor, The Davidson Building,
5 Southampton Street, London, on 30th September 2010.

The 2010 Annual General Meeting of the British Computer Society Fortran Specialist Group was held at 11.00 am on Thursday, 30th September 2010.

Present:  Alan Clarke 
Peter CrouchNickel Institute
Sam EllisDefence Equipment & Support (MoD)
Ian HounamNAG Ltd
David MuxworthyBSI Fortran Convenor
Clive PageUniversity of Leicester
John PelanUniversity College London
John ReidScience and Technology Facilities Council
Jane SleightholmeFortranPlus
Ariadne Tampion 

The Chairman welcomed everyone to the meeting, especially Ariadne Tampion who was attending her first Fortran SG AGM.

(i). Apologies for absence:

Apologies for absence were received from Ian Chivers (Rhymney Consulting), Miles Ellis, Carol Hewlett (LSE) and John Young (International Seismological Centre).

(ii). Minutes of previous AGM:

The minutes were accepted as a correct record subject to the date being corrected from 2008 to 2009 and were approved unanimously (proposed by John Pelan, seconded by David Muxworthy).

(iii). Matters Arising:

There were no matters arising.

(iv). Chairman's Report:

The chairman reported that the Group had held two joint meetings during the year, an evening event with the Advance Programming SG at which John Reid was the speaker and a one-day meeting with the Computational Physics Group of the Institute of Physics arranged by John Pelan which included a presentation celebrating 40 years of the Fortran SG given by David Muxworthy.

He commented that while the motions of no confidence had not been passed by the EGM he hoped that the concerns raised by BCS volunteers would be taken into consideration by the Trustee Board and senior BCS executive staff in the future.

He thanked the Committee, particularly John Young who was stepping down after over 20 years service including time spent as Chairman and Secretary, and BCS HQ staff, particularly the Member Groups team led by Judith Taylor, for all their assistance in the smooth running of the Group during the year.

John Reid thanked Peter Crouch.

The report was approved unanimously (proposed by John Reid, seconded by Jane Sleightholme).

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

The Treasurer, Sam Ellis, gave a verbal report and presented the accounts for the year.

The Group’s expenditure by the year-end was higher than the budgeted figure but thanks to contributions from the Institute of Physics and a member of the Committee we did not spend more than our allocation from BCS.

This report was approved unanimously (Proposed by proposed by John Reid, seconded Ian Hounam).

David Muxworthy (in his role as BSI Fortran Convenor) presented a report on the use of the SG 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.

It was noted that this report would be submitted to BCS together with the Chairman’s report.

This report was approved unanimously (Proposed by Clive Page, seconded by John Reid).

(vi). Membership Secretary's Report:

Ian Chivers was unable to attend the meeting due to illness so the report was given by Peter Crouch.

The Group membership was 184 at the beginning of September 2010, one more than at the time of last year’s AGM. 12 members had addresses outside the UK, with two each in Europe, Australasia, Africa, USA and the Far East, the two remaining being in the Caribbean and the Middle East, respectively.

The age profile is heavily biased toward the older members, with three quarters being between 40 and 70 years of age and only 17% aged below 40 years.

57% of our members are either Chartered Members or Fellows and another 32% are MBCS. Only 7% of our members are women, about half the figure for BCS as a whole.

The report was approved unanimously (Proposed by John Pelan, seconded by Jane Sleightholme).

(vii). Web Editor's Report:

The Web Editor, Peter Crouch, reported that he had made a start at revising the Group’s web pages to use the new BCS logo and corporate colour scheme and layout. In addition he had added pages covering FSG AGMs from 1994 to 1999 based on information provided by David Muxworthy. That left the reports on meetings from 2003 to 2007 still to be converted to the 'new look'.

The report was accepted unanimously (proposed by Ian Hounam , seconded by David Muxworthy).

(viii). Election of Officers:

The nominations for the SG officers had been received by the Secretary according to the Constitution.

John Pelan took over as Chairman for re-election of the Chairman. David Muxworthy and John Reid had nominated Peter Crouch and as the only nominee he was deemed to be duly elected.

Peter Crouch and Ian Chivers had nominated Sam Ellis as Secretary and Treasurer. Clive Page and Jane Sleightholme had nominated John Pelan as Vice-Chairman. Peter Crouch and John Pelan had nominated Ian Chivers as Membership Secretary. Sam Ellis and Ian Chivers had nominated Peter Crouch as Web Editor. John Young and Jane Sleightholme had nominated David Muxworthy as Archivist. Peter Crouch and David Muxworthy had nominated John Reid as Standards Officer. Ian Chivers and Sam Ellis had nominated Clive Page and Jane Sleightholme as Committee Members.

As each of these positions had only received single nominees all were deemed duly elected. The committee for the year 2010/2011 is therefore:

ChairmanPeter Crouch
Vice-ChairmanJohn Pelan
SecretarySam Ellis
TreasurerSam Ellis
ArchivistDavid Muxworthy
Standards OfficerJohn Reid
Membership Secretary  Ian Chivers
Web EditorPeter Crouch
Committee MembersClive Page
Jane Sleightholme

(ix). Future activities of the Group:

There was a discussion of online Fortran resources with a demonstration by Clive Page of a prototype site (now at www.star.le.ac.uk/~cgp/fortran.html) with links to many others that are heavily interconnected. The Chairman would see if BCS could provide an archive by contacting Carl Harris if Clive Page could provide some idea of storage requirements.

John Pelan suggested that we plan to run another event with the Institute of Physics and Jane Sleightholme said that the Advanced Programming Specialist Group were keen to advertize. Jane also wondered whether Nick Maclaren would provide a presentation when progress was made on interfacing Fortran with C.

(x). Any Other Business:

Peter Crouch provided information on the Specialist Groups meeting on Thursday 28th October and enquired whether anyone else wanted join him in representing the Fortran SG. Jane Sleightholme was a potential representative.

(xi) Date of next Annual General Meeting:

The date of the next AGM was chosen as Thursday 29th September 2011. The AGM has to sit between issue of accounts and submission of authorised signatures back to BCS HQ.

This concluded the formal AGM business. The meeting was closed. After a break for lunch, three presentations were made at which 18 Group members and guests were present:

The CASTEP project: reflections on the first 10 years by Keith Refson, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory

Compiler conformance to the Fortran 66, 77, 90, 95, 2003 and 2008 standards by Ian Chivers, Rhymney Consulting & Jane Sleightholm, Fortranplus

Technical Report on further interoperability with C by John Reid, JKR Associates and Rutherford Appleton Laboratory

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


Comments on this or any other of the Group's pages should be sent by email to the FSG Web Editor.
Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional Valid CSS!

Last modified: Wed 2 Nov 2011 09:30:27