30th June 2017 @ 15:00 – The Hoop and Grapes, 80 Farringdon Street, London
Chairman’s report
Paul Grosvenor opened the meeting and welcomed everyone to this year’s AGM. The previous minutes which had been published in Vector and on-line were agreed and proposed by Ray Cannon, seconded by Nicholas Small.
Paul then gave his Chairman’s report for the year; It had been a quiet year for the group with everyone being busy at work or at home. Because of these pressures we had struggled with the production of Vector and with activities. Unfortunately, our committee is now very small and our list of volunteers even smaller; we need more help. With regard to Vector we have a few articles available to publish, but not many and putting aside the production issues, without content we cannot produce anything. Paul hoped that another edition could be produced in 4-8 weeks’ time.
Paul suggested that next year’s AGM could be more like last year and it be turned into a full day event at a location probably in London. To wrap up Paul thanked BAA-London for allowing us to hold our AGM at their monthly meeting
Treasurer’s report
Summary of income and expenditure/receipts and payments.
Nicholas Small then gave his Treasurers report as follows;
| 2016-17 | 2015-16 | |
|---|---|---|
| Income/Receipts | ||
| Subscriptions | 4477.64 | 6698.52 |
| Bank interest | 33.33 | 34.48 |
| Vector advertising | 160.00 | 325.00 |
| Total receipts | 6893.00 | 2793.77 |
| Expenditure/payments | ||
| Administration | 0.00 | 17.50 |
| Vector | 0.00 | 2592.93 |
| Projects | 1450.00 | 0.00 |
| Conferences-seminars | 1854.50 | 0.00 |
| Other | 202.80 | 198.31 |
| Total payments | 3527.30 | 2808.74 |
| Assets summary | ||
| Bank and other balances | 17343.92 | 16360.25 |
| Debtors | 1637.50 | 1637.50 |
| Creditors | -8750.00 | -8100.00 |
| Net assets | 10411.42 | 9897.75 |
Committee
Paul then went on to discuss the committee for 2017-18. Stephen Taylor had asked already to stand down due to his other commitments. Kai Jaeger requested that the post of Vector Editor be released on the grounds that little work had been done over the previous year. The committee going forward therefore became;
| Chairman | Paul Grosvenor |
| Treasurer | Nicholas Small |
| Secretary | vacant |
| Vector Editor | vacant |
| Activities | Phil Last |
This was proposed and seconded by Chris Hogan and Ray Cannon The post of Auditor was discussed and there being no objections Chris Hogan was duly re-appointed. Proposed by Phil and seconded by Paul Auditor Chris Hogan.
Questions
The meeting then went on to address some questions;
Vector
Paul – Do we want to continue?
- The consensus was yes, but there was no proper agreement as to how the problems of workload and time could sensibly be addressed.
- We should go out to the subscribers to ask for more articles but this does not address the problems of production.
- What is the demand from subscribers for Vector. The general view was that it was a quality publication and anecdotally subscribers liked paper in their hands. Maybe the question should be asked to the membership more widely.
Kai – we have no time to shorten a 15,000 word article
- Who can check, review and moderate all these articles ? no one was able to offer help or suggest alternatives.
Adam – suggested that we simply try the code to confirm that at least is correct
- Out of context this can be very hard.
- Who is going to do it?
Kai – Who maintains the website?
- Current problem is that there is no up to date information.
- The fact that it is so out of date could be counter productive.
- Optima currently hosts the existing website and did some work on the original site for the AGM last year but little has been done since.
- The fact that it is so out of date could be counter productive.
- Nicholas – we need to appoint a Web Master.
Adam – contributors could publish themselves
- This idea gained a lot of interest and generally was considered to be a good option.
- No-one was able to offer to work on this proposal.
Chris and Kai – questioned WordPress security.
Chris – how and who would moderate any on-line solution
- No answer provided but back to the old resource problem again Nicholas – we need to get more contributors.
Credit Cards
- Nicholas reported that the processing of credit cards incurred an annual fee of £110 plus £80 for compliance.
- These costs combined with Vector production and mailing costs probably exceed the cost of membership if we were to be producing 4 editions per year.
- Paul – should we consider free membership and rely upon Sustaining members to fund events?
- Suggested that we should canvass opinion from the membership more widely.
- Ray – thanked the treasurer for all his work.
Paul – location for next year’s AGM
- Where any preference was shown centre of London seemed to be the favourite.
Paul thanked everyone and closed the meeting at 16:15