eBCSOxfordshire – monthly branch electronic newsletter

• Are you a member of BCS Oxfordshire branch?
• Do you get our email newsletter?
• If not, would you like to? (you don't have to be a BCS member)

If you would like to know a little more about the background to the newsletter and how the mailing list works, read on.

Background

For several years, BCS Oxfordshire branch has been circulating a personally-addressed email newsletter to branch members to remind them about meetings.

Informal feedback suggests that personally addressed messages are valued more than impersonal emails, so this is a practice which we hope to be able to continue.

In 2006, BCS launched its own HTML-format electronic newsletter, eBCS, replacing e-Bulletin which had been a text-mode newsletter.

For our 2006/7 meeting programme, the branch decided to follow the lead of eBCS and exploit HTML format.
This allows our monthly emails to be more colourful and, we hope, easier to read.
We are indebted to the BCS webmaster, Carl Harris, for his advice on developing an HTML newsletter which renders correctly in the various webmail clients such as Google Mail, Hotmail, and Yahoo Mail as well as Outlook, Thunderbird and Opera.

Although it involves extra processing, we thought it important to retain the personalisation, and we will continue to so do, depending of course on the availability of volunteers to implement it.

We also maintain an online archive of past issues.

Newsletter format

The eBCS Oxfordshire newsletter is sent as a multipart message in mime format, with the contents as a plaintext attachment and as an HTML attachment.
If your email client cannot render HTML format emails, you should see the plaintext version.
If your email client allows you to configure it to display incoming messages in text form in preference to HTML format, you may also see the text version. Clients which allow you to do this include Thunderbird, Opera and Outlook 2003.

We have been asked to provide the option of a text-only newsletter, so this is under investigation.
It would allow the newsletters to get through to organisations whose anti-spam measures delete all incoming HTML formatted emails.

How the mailing list works

We used to keep our own list of people who wanted to be informed by email about branch events.
A few years ago, BCS HQ has made it possible for us to download a current list of BCS members who have chosen Oxfordshire branch as their primary or one of their secondary branches.
So we now maintain our mailing list in two parts:

• BCS members, whose updated contact details are obtained from BCS HQ 
• Other people who are not BCS members but have asked to be informed about branch events.

BCS members

Before sending out each monthly newsletter we download a current list of BCS members who have chosen to join Oxfordshire branch.
We send the newsletter to everyone on that list except those people who have chosen not to receive electronic communications from BCS.

BCS members can check and change their email preferences and branch affiliation by logging on to the BCS members' area at https://wam.bcs.org.

Other Oxfordshire branch members

Our branch meetings are open to all, not just to BCS members.
Obviously we hope that, after coming to a few meetings, you will choose to join BCS, but there's no obligation.
If you are not a BCS member you can ask to go on the branch mailing list by filling in the attendance form at a meeting or by using the online contact form. We will then add you to our local list of branch members and you should start receiving the electronic newsletter.

I'm not getting my copy

Could the email have been filtered out as possible spam?
Depending on your email client, the way to handle this varies.
If you can, add oxon.webmaster at bcs.org.uk to your list of approved senders, and filter as legitimate any email whose subject contains eBCS.

• If you're a BCS member, check your details at https://wam.bcs.org.
  • Are you down as a member of Oxfordshire branch?
  • Have you elected to receive emails from BCS?
  • Have you recently changed your email address and forgotten to update it on the BCS member site?
  • If all else fails please tell us using the contact form
• If you're not a BCS member
  • Please use the contact form

Note: because a lot of branch members seem to have obsolete email addresses in the BCS member database, many emails bounce. If this has happened, we will have stopped sending further emails to that address.

Please stop sending me the newsletter

• BCS members: use the members' area at https://wam.bcs.org and either turn off all emails from the BCS or drop out of Oxfordshire branch.

Our system as implemented does not allow Oxfordshire branch members to receive email newsletters from BCS centrally while not receiving the branch newsletter.
If you don't like this restriction, please use the contact form to tell us.

• Non BCS members: use the contact form