CompSoc Minutes 15/10/2004

In attendence

• Richard Wilson
• John Smith
• Chris Boyle
• Tim Troy
• Andrew Sully
• Peter Ellis
• Graham Richardson
• Euan Magreggor
• Sadiq Jaffer

Server Downtime

Richard Wilson informed the exec that the server downtime scheduled for this weekend would begin at 1:30 due to the badmintion society having signups for an event this weekend. Richard Wilson then asked if there were any further requests with regards to what time the servers would be taken down, there were none
forthcoming.

Joe Winchester (Eclipse)

Peter Ellis onformed the exec that the Joe Winchester lecture is on the 27th of this month so we wnat to begin advertising it now. Andrew Sully agreed to do posters for the event, Peter Ellis agreed to give him the required information as soon as possible.

Peter Ellis also agreed to talk to Steve Jarvis and Doron/Ananda about in lecture advertising. The exec agreed that this coming Wednesday morning would be a good time to advertise in ISE, the exec also suggested advertising compsoc services in these lectures. At this point Richard Wilson pointed out that we want to ensure we have a disclaimer about what happens if our server goes down, the exec agreed.

Peter Ellis agreed to organise the room for this event.

Hursley trip

Peter Ellis informed the exec that he had put both signup and newsletter information on the website, Peter Ellis also requested that Tim Troy organise the transport for the event.

Sadiq Jaffer agreed to ask the EUO about getting PDR points signed off for the event to encourage engineering students to attend.

Peter Ellis agreed to E-mail IBM about a possible subsidising of the coach, a provisional figure was that we would provide £5 per person plus £100 and ask IBM to cover the rest.

Bletchley park trip

The exec agreed that organising a trip to bletchley park in term 2 would be a good idea, Peter Ellis agreed to organise it and Andrew Sully agreed to do any posters.

IBM link to go on the website

Peter Ellis reminded the exec that IBM have asked us to put a lint to one of their pages on our website saying “Supported by IBM”. Chris boyle agreed to do this.

Newsletter

Peter Ellis asked for items to put in the compsoc newsletter, the following items were suggested by the exec.

• LAN
• Hursley
• Downtime
• Network cable

Programming competition

Andrew Sully agreed to send the programming competition mails to the exec list CP, spam progcomp stuff to the exec list. PP to talk to Steve jarvis, PP to mail Accenture. Booklet, spam off DCs printers perhaps?

LAN

Richard Wilson asked the exec how we would divide out the people between the rooms for the LAN, the exec decided that we would let people go where they wanted subject to power distribution.

Chris boyle mentioned that he would only be there for setup and takedown of the LAN as he is going to cambrige that weekend, he would however finish the icecast script for the music server before he left.

TOS documents

The exec decided that the TOS documents were taking too long and therefore Peter Ellis should do the rewrite and then send them to the exec list for approval.

Gaming account

Peter Ellis informed the exec that ITS have told us that we can only have a 10 gig quota on the suahu account unless we pay 20 pounds per gig for more space. Richard Wilson summarised the 3 options for the exec. If we want more quota we have to pay or possibly talk to ITS about the signed agreement we have. We could mount the files on bong and use H for savegame storage etc or if we think we can manage with 10 gig then we manage with 10 gig.

The exec decided that we don’t want ot make too much trouble for ITS as they do us a lot of favours already and therefore mounting all the installers off bong and talking about signed agreements was not a good idea. Tim Troy informed the exec that he did not think that the society was in a position to pay 20 pounds per gig for more quota at the time. Therefore the decision of the exec was to live with a 10 gig quota for the moment.

Euan MacGregor agreed to move lesser used games on to bong with appropreate permissions to free up some space on the H drive at gaming. He also agreed to ask ITS about new drivers for the computers as there is currently a problem with the openGL support.

Finance

Tim Troy briefly summarised the accounts for the exec. We have the following assets:

• £335 from signups
• £83 carried over from last year
• £190 grant from the union
• £100 capital from the union

Total: £708

Tim Troy also said that he estimates we have 50–60 in liabilities and requested that any people with outstanding claims forward them to him.

Tim Troy also pointed out that we are still getting monies from signups filtering through and thus this picture was not entirely accurate, therefore the exec requested that Tim Troy post a summary of the accounts to the exec list.

AOB

CP to redo java/swing tutorial for 2nd week of term 2. Lucidion and PP and Euan to do LaTeX tutorial for week 1 term 2.

CompSoc Minutes 2004/10/08

Present

• Peter Ellis
• Richard Wilson
• Chris Boyle
• Timothy Troy
• Andrew Sully
• Ian Norris
• Paul Broadbridge
• Michelle D’Israeli

Peter Ellis apologised for not posting the minutes from the last meeting to the exec list and thus read the minutes for approval.

Membership

It was commented that the membership was 60 down from the end of last year. Richard Wilson asked the meeting if anybody thought this was a problem but pointed out that we usually get approximately one member a week joining the society and thus this was probably about the same as last year. The people present concurred and the item was rested.

Communication

Peter Ellis apologised for not sending out a job list last week due to other pressures getting on top of him.

Timothy Troy requested that when people arrange stuff that they send a mail to the exec list telling people about it. The rest of the people present concurred.

First Social

The confusion over the time of the first social was cleared up and Peter Ellis apologised for the lack of communication. It was agreed that we should meet at 17:30 in union north to begin preparation for the social.

Tickets to a union event

Peter Ellis raised the matter that 2 tickets to a union event had been made available to him by the Welfare and equal opportunities department for writing the broadband guide but he did not wish to make use of them. The meeting agreed that it would be fair to offer these as a prize for something. The decision of what they would be a prize for was deferred until later.

IBM Linux challenge lecture

Peter Ellis and Andrew Sully were tasked to organise the publicity for the Linux challenge lecture on Wednesday the 13th of October.

Budget

Timothy Troy asked the exec what likely expenditures there were for the year to assist him with preparing the budget. The exec provided him with rough figures but agreed to provide him with better data on both our hardware requirements and the cost of advertising lectures by the next exec meeting.

Richard Wilson summarised who has the finance cards and who the authourised users are.

Michelle D’israelie asked how we would be funding the coach trip to IBM Hursley on the 3rd of November. Timothy Troy suggested subsidised coach fares and the rest of the meeting concurred. Michelle D’israelie pointed out that the union organise coaches at a somewhat lower rate than private hire and Peter Ellis and Timothy Troy agreed to investigate this on Monday.

Planned Spending

Richard Wilson then summarised the planned spending for this year as follows.
Technical:
* New PSU for insomnia as the current one is known to be unreliable.
* A gigabit switch for LANs if we have the money.

Academic:
* Advertising for guest lectures

Timothy Troy asked if the Academic team would be requiring money for booking AV equipment, Peter Ellis said this would be unnecessary if we did room bookings through DCS.

At this point Richard Wilson asked for a summary of the financial situation and Timothy Troy agreed to have this ready for next week.

AOB

Paul Broadbridge and Timothy Troy mentioned that there were connectivity problems with Insomnia but the discussion of this was deferred until later.

Peter Ellis was asked what the situation with the gaming user account (Suahu) was, he reported to the exec that we are currently waiting for the ITS technical support to get back to us and agreed to chase them up about this.

CompSoc Minutes 2004/10/01

Peter Ellis stated that this term we are trying to keep the meetings short, and would people please use the exec list for status stuff?

Summaries of work that has been done

The Exec requested that Richard Wilson and Chris Boyle post the state of the tech to the exec list.

The exec requested that Chris Boyle post the state of the new website to the exec list.

The exec requested that Peter Ellis and Michelle D’israeli post the current state of the academic side of the society to the exec list.

Peter Ellis stated that the LAN rooms have been booked and that he would post the details to the exec list and put the details in the events system also.

Freshers Fayre

Peter Ellis requested that people send an E-mail to the exec list stating
when they are available to help on the freshers fayre stand.

At this point the exec voted to add Ian Norris to the exec list as he is becoming heavily involved in the running of the society.

The exec asked Andrew Sully about the status of the promotional posters. He replied that they were ready to be used after the “Poster spam” image had been removed and the IBM logo had been added.

Ian Norris was asked for the status of the freshers fayre video. He replied that work was progressing and it should be ready but more footage was needed.

Socials

The exec decided that we wanted both a welcome meeting and to make an effort to
transport new members to the pub social.

The exec agreed that we want the welcome meeting to be on a Friday night before
gaming.

The exec agreed that driving new members to the pub was a bad idea as it
will tie them to needing lifts. It was agreed that escorting them on the bus route was a good idea.

Michelle D’israeli informed the exec that she had arranged for an area of the city arms to be reserved for us for the Monday pub socials. The exec commended her for this.

AOB

The exec as a whole requested that anyone who needs help should ask for it and it would be volunteered.

Ian Norris informed the exec that he had a C++ for Java programmers tutorial ready to give at some point, he was commended for this by the exec.

Peter Ellis agreed to book the BFL this week for the same dates as it was last year.