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• Committee members only: please update the Programme Status page with session details as they are confirmed.

Brought forward from the 2004/5 planning page

Possible lecture subjects

(I've deleted subjects from the list which have been covered in the 2004/5 programme)

• Data Protection Act 
• Property, SPAM Legislation, Freedom of Information
• Data Security
• Semantic Web (Southampton University may be able to help provide or suggest a speaker)
• Software Engineering
• Grid Computing
• Aspect-oriented software development
• Naming
• Web Services Choreography
• Data Storage and Backup
• Talks from BCS Award winners (the 2005 winners won't be announced till the autumn – too late for the 2005/6 programme)
• Issues in moving to Linux
• e-Diamond Project
• Beagle 2 software (see below SheilaLloydLyons /27.03.2005 18:41/ )
• Bayesian Statistics
• Project Management: Estimation and Controlling Scope Creep
• Virtual Reality
• Building a Personal Web Site
• Networking, Broadband delivery
• Running International Businesses
• Pipex-ISP-performance-unbundling the local loop
• e-procurement
• Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery
• Next generation mobiles
• Joint sessions with other local groups such as the IEE Oxford branch.

Other suggestions welcome.

(SheilaLloydLyons /27.03.2005 18:56/) I suggested the Beagle talk as my son-in-law was working on the project. His view was that those involved would rather not talk about it. He suggested the Cassini-Huygens project instead http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cassini-Huygens/. That has proved very successful and people will be proud to talk about it.

(SheilaLloydLyons /27.03.2005 18:56/) Neil Barrett has offered to give us another talk using a case study as an example, probably on hacking and denial of service.

(SheilaLloydLyons /27.03.2005 18:56/) I have a possibility of a talk on 'best practices benchmarking for application software development and support'. I have heard the speaker and he is good. He is interested and I have asked him for an outline of this talk.

(RobertWard /19.04.2005 09:10/) I have a very keen speaker for next year. Peter Quinten from Qbit Testing who can talk very knowledgeably on various software testing topics. some options are on different testing methodologies, what happens if testing is not done well or anything else software testing related. he could also do a humorous talk on what happens if testing is not successful (the wrong types of testing, or no testing) and the outcomes from this. he is a very good speaker, and can talk technically or at business level. He is an ISEB accredited trainer, and is a director of the company.

(RobertWard /19.04.2005 09:10/) another option would be to have someone who is a specialist in CMM or CMMI to give a presentation. i do not have a speaker in mind, but this may be of interest.

(StefCoetzee /24.05.2005 16:24/} As a ‘newbie’ I trust that I will be forgiven for treading where angels fear in my ignorance. Mobile Computing could bring an extra and interesting dimension to the wired world context when looking at the list above. A possible topic could be the challenges of going mobile – spanning data security, Identity management (including authentication and authorisation), wireless broadband networking (Wi-Fi, 3G, WiMAX, Personal Area Networking (PAN) in the context of Bluetooth and upcoming challengers such as 802.11n and UWB etc etc) and in particular the impact of wireless broadband on unbundling the local loop. This leads on neatly to next generation telephony (mobile and fixed) and the migration towards IP based communications – beyond telephony into media and entertainment such as TV and Radio. A speaker from one of the Telcos together with someone from media (BBC, CNN etc ) could be interesting at a number of levels

(StefCoetzee /24.05.2005 16:51/} Another topic getting a fair amount of airplay is Machine-to-Machine comuting or M2M (the concept of communications between a device containing some amount of data and another device that requires the use of that data). No speaker in mind yet – just floating the idea

Potential Christmas lectures and lecturers

• John Naughton of the Observer (if we can get hold of him)

Author of A Brief History of the Future: Origins of the Internet
See also his online diary
I still think John would be a good choice but we have drawn a complete blank in contacting him so we probably have to accept it's not an option AdrianWalmsley /24.03.2005 17:14/

• Tim Berners-Lee – as Sir Tim studied in Oxford and is on the mailing list of our branch, we would love to have him as a guest speaker. Stop Press Tim has been appointed to a chair at Southampton University. See the press release
  

Potential Visits

If we choose a visit in the London area one option would be to use a meeting room in the new BCS office just off the Strand for part of the day. No charge for the room and quite nice buffets can be provided (for which we would have to pay)

• RAF Benson/Helicopter simulators
• Amazon (RobertWard /19.04.2005 09:10/) this gets my vote!
• BT Research Centre
• Cranfield/Shrivenham

Other thoughts/ideas for 2005/6

• Since our Open Source debate was so popular, how about a joint meeting with the newly-formed OSSG (Open Source Specialist Group), who expressed an interest in holding meetings around the country?

OSSG Open Source Software in Schools-
This summary thanks to Conrad Taylor

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Just a quick mention that last night's meeting of the Open Source Specialist Group was fantastic!
The speakers were the headmaster of Orwell School in Suffolk, and two guys from the Cutter project who helped him transform the school's network.

Some of the highlights that come immediately to mind without referring to notes:

• MS Windows cleared off all desktop systems, and replaced with a thin client solution with KDE desktops instead.
• PCs “heading for the scrap-heap” given five or six more years' lease of life.
• Desktop machines have no hard drive at all; everything boots from the application servers, which are IBM Blade technology.
• Extra machines purchased at UKP 120 each, and no software costs!
• Kids adjusted to KDE and Star Office, GIMP, Scribus and other OSS applications within a week! (The staff are still struggling.)
• NX software lets students still run Windows apps when they need to (e.g. for Visual Basic).
• Students have access to their school desktops from home.

Many more fascinating aspects, including incredible tales of how young people were managing to trash the software and hack systems on the old network (and now they can't)...

You should have been there!

But maybe someday you can... the speakers allowed me to video their presentations, and these can be included in this summer's experiments in producing audio and video for the BCS (streamed from a BCS server, and on hard media).

Despite some initial set-up problems, I also performed an experiment in recording audio direct to the hard disk of my iBook laptop, using a high-quality studio mic linked through a Tascam US-122 USB audio interface.

AdrianWalmsley /08.06.2005 08:17/ The OSSG meeting on 7 June 2005 was on the subject of Open Source Software in schools (see meeting report and slides). The recent Becta report suggested significantly lower TCO was attainable by schools using Open Source software. See also John Naughton's column from May 15th. Even if we have missed the boat to for a joint session with the OSSG, how about a meeting of our own on this topic?

(StefCoetzee /24.05.2005 18:07/) I like it, Adrian, timely and has applicability well beyond schools. Do you envisage the topic offering real experience of equivalents to the traditional licensed proprietary offerings in schools as compared to those available from the Open Source community? Another spin on this might be to wrap in the whole movement and Mark Shuttleworth's (the astronaut fellow) foundation for driving OSS into schools in deprived parts of the world. Could he be a possible speaker?
AdrianWalmsley /24.05.2005 19:03/ Stef, I didn't have any speaker in mind unless you have an inside track and could get hold of John Naughton. But Mark Shuttleworth himself would be good if we could get him. I note the Shuttleworth Foundation has its own (nice-looking) wiki. At a quick glance I couldn't figure out which wiki implementation they are using.
Alternatively we might try to get a speaker from Research Machines – who are sponsoring our Schools Web Competition and who supply a lot of kit to schools.
AdrianWalmsley /12.06.2005 19:42/ also on Open Source in Education: Digital South Yorkshire is organising a one day Free conference in Sheffield on Open Source software for education. This is being held on Friday 24 June and follows on from the international Alt-i-Lab conference earlier in the week. see http://www.digitalsy.org.uk/EventInfo?eventid=109

Oxford term dates for 2005/6

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MICHAELMAS TERM 2005
Sunday, 9 October – Saturday, 3 December
HILARY TERM 2006
Sunday, 15 January – Saturday, 11 March
TRINITY TERM 2006
Sunday, 23 April – Saturday, 17 June

• More joint sessions with OU Comp Soc. Two of our Spring 2005 sessions are featured on their termcard
• Follow up to the BCS/Royal Academy of Engineering report on Challenges of Complex IT Projects
• Why would a Windows user be interested in the new Mac mini – preferably with demo
• Professor Nigel Shadbolt on the Semantic Web or AI: he was giving a talk on these lines to Hampshire Branch Thursday 5th May and would be happy to speak in Oxford. http://www.bcs.org.uk/branches/hampshire/events/050505.htm He's a good speaker and they must be doing good stuff to have attracted Sir Tim to join the department. AdrianWalmsley /06.05.2005 00:07/
• We've been offered a talk on VoIP

SheilaLloydLyons /10.11.05 13:39/
Ideas from the Glasgow branch:
• The have a successful Christmas social event
• Special student events in the Autumn
• They are host the Turing lecture
• Why not ask our members to give a talk on a specialist subject?
• They quite commonly have demos from companies which are successful and provided they keep the sales pitch low key are not a problem.
• They often have hands on work shops. e.g. one meeting all the committee brought their GPS satellite navigation systems in and demonstrated them to the audience.
• Get some local Ph D? student to present their thesis. Southampton have 4 students in an evening and give a prize to the best (selected by the audience) at the end of the evening.

Aberdeen Branch ran dinner or lunch time meetings. They invited a speaker to seed discussion. The cost was £10 and subsidised by the branch. This ran for five years but has now petered out. They are going to try lunch time buffets where you bring your own food.

One branch is organising a prize for the best lecturer of the year. The choice is made by meeting attendees in the form of a brief questionnaire.