Meeting date: 1st July 2021

This year’s AGM was held using Zoom and the meeting was recorded.  The polling feature of Zoom was used for the voting process.

Officers Present:

Paul Grosvenor (Chairman), Chris ‘Ziggi’ Paul (Secretary), Nicholas Small (Treasurer), John Jacob – aka Jake (Editor and Events)

Also Present:

Stephen Taylor, Chris Hughes, Rich Park, Ray Cannon, Morten Kromberg, Guy Larocque, Peter Vernigorov, Chris Hogan, Curtis Jones, Adám Brudzewsky, Bob Therriault, Beau Webber, Raymond Polivka, Martin Neitzel

Paul Grosvenor welcomed everyone to the AGM 2021.

Minutes from the 2020 AGM

The minutes from the previous AGM were presented, a few minor changes were requested and acted on. (List officers separately, and a small typo).

The minutes were unanimously accepted

Chairman’s report – Paul Grosvenor

  • This is our second virtual AGM, based on the number of participants it has been more popular than a face to face in London
  • Due to Covid we have not had a face to face and all planned events were cancelled, and there is nothing planned for the coming year as yet.  However, we would like to plan an event for next year.
  • Biweekly meetings are continuing, several open sessions which is good but if anyone has a presentation, they would like to give please let us know
  • We have some changes required to our constitution.  We are calling an extraordinary general meeting
  • Thanks to Jake and the web team for all their work.

Treasurer’s Report – Nicholas Small

  • Our finances continue to be on a firm footing
  • Seven sustaining members paid last year with one paying their arrears, therefore 8 lots of £500.
  • Meeting expenditure was slightly higher as we bought an extra licence at the Iverson Centenary Meeting.
  • £2000 on the website
  • Surplus of approximately £1800 for the year
  • Amount written off was for sustaining members who clearly no longer wish to pay.  This caused a slight drop in our net assets.
  • The website expenses break-down to £400 for licences and the rest for manhours.

A vote on accepting the accounts was held, and they were accepted

Website and Events Report – Jake (John Jacob)

  • We have three websites
    • The Archive – No changes proposed mainly because there are a lot of references to it.  That having been said it is degrading a bit.
    • The British APL association and Vector, 2 sites that are WordPress sites; we are looking at merging the two together for simplicity.
  • The proposal to digitise the whole of the printed archive
    • Morton has surrendered a set of the journals, this will be a destructive process, so thanks Morton.
    • We have a quote to convert them all to PDF ready to be published on the site.
  • Contributors: Authors submitting a paper for us to publish.  We have had some success this year with the Webinars, so we could create an anchor page to any presentation, give the presenter the right to edit, and add any recording.  Therefore, contributors will not only be authors, but presenters and they could have access to maintain the work if they wish to.  NB, there is commenting on these pages.
  • The biweekly webinars have gone better than hoped.  These should continue indefinitely (just skip the Christmas weeks).
    • These meeting avoid the Dyalog Webinars which are also on a Thursday but every 4 weeks
    • There was a request to announce any forthcoming Dyalog Webinars at the end the BAA webinars.
    • Schedules and Diaries are available both from the BAA website and the Dyalog site, we may try and link these.
  • We are keen to start the Symposia once circumstances allow.
  • The Mini conferences will also happen when possible, maybe in 2022.
  • The Iverson centenary went really well, the video is now ready to be published subject to a review by Stephen Taylor.  There will be an anchor page on the Vector Site.  About 200 people attended.
  • We now have a circulation list of about 400, 80 have come from self-registration via the website.

The Committee

Paul proposed the current team be re-elected on mass.

Chairman –          Paul Grosvenor

Secretary –          Ziggi (Chris Paul)

Treasurer –          Nicholas Small

Events –                Phil Last

Web Editor –       Jake (John Jacob)

Web Master –     Mike Lingard

Web Admin –      Chris Hogan

The committee was voted in unanimously.

Chris Hogan was voted in as auditor for the coming year unanimously.

Proposed Changes to the Constitution.

Full proposal is on the website https://britishaplassociation.org/baa-regulations

Comments can be made at the bottom of the page, a Disqus account is required.

It was agreed to hold an EGM to vote on these changes.  The EGM will be held at the beginning of the Webinar on the 12th August 2021.

Provision of the Vector Journals in a Digital Format

As stated earlier it is proposed to take a set of Vector Journals donated by Morton and scan them into a searchable PDF digital format.  This is up to the point where we have digital material.

We have been quoted a number under £1000.00.

Adám asked if ‘searchable’ related to English text only and not APL characters.  Jake stated we will do the best we can (for all text). 

Jake said it was still worth getting the bulk of the text up on-line even if there were issues with searching APL code/Characters.

Voting was stopped as Nicholas Small requested more research and that the question be move to the EGM.

AOB

Beau Webber asked that polls within Zoom have an abstain option in future

Raymond Polivka asked about BAA membership.  It was stated that as individual membership was now free, being on the mailing list was the only requirement for membership.

Sustaining members membership is another thing, they pay and have logon id for the BAA site and can post anything in their own name.

Raymond Polivka asked a question about a perceived disagreement between linear algebra and APL.  Raymond and Adám Brudzewsky were going to discuss this in another place.

Bob Therriault was asked about the Arraycast podcast.  The key points of Bob’s answer were:

Adám Brudzewsky asked about the release of the recordings of the BAA meeting.

  • It was agreed to share the work of publishing
  • There was a suggestion that we could break them down into smaller videos to highlight individual contributions
  • Care needs to be taken over some videos (GDPR, email addresses etc)
  • It was suggested that Jake, Adám and Ziggi discuss this in another place.

Every 4 weeks Adám runs an APL campfire, a Zoom meeting with a focus on the history of APL.

Martin Neitzel gave a small presentation of ‘Music in J’.

Paul closed the meeting, and we agreed the next AGM will be the 2nd session in June 2022 and we assume it would be mainly virtual even if there is a live element.

Minutes produced by Ziggi