Present (Exec listed first)

Bruce Tinton (Bruce)
Andrew Wheat (Candle)
Frederick Emmott (Fred)
Laurence Hurst (Laurence)
Arun Prasannan (Polar)
David Buckley (Bucko)
Kim Tibbetts-Harlow (Kim)
Sean Connolly (Morlark)

Timothy Retout (Tim)
Daniel Watkins (Odd_bloke)
Richard Warburton (Mulletron)

Agenda

LUG
Changes to academic events
pub crawl
lack of organisation
lack of communication
lack of responsibility
lack of society confidence
lack of forward planning
Any other business

Joblist

Person	Item
Polar	Flyers
Laurence	Newsletter with academic events and social events below.
Kim	X-Mas meal and bowling events on the website.
Polar	Put events on the compsoc calender.
Candle	poke virgin and castle for prices and menus.
Laurence	Include an apology in the next newsletter for the severely delayed one.
Kim	Organise pub crawl for Thursday week 9.
Laurence	Include above pub crawl in newsletter.
Fred	Sort out bugzilla to kim’s hotmail.
Laurence	Make clear that pub social is not about the drinking in newsletters.
Morlark	Add lug organised events to website
Laurence	Newsletter 5 unnamed t-shirts for sale @ £5 each. Interest to exec.
Fred	Documentation for the next tech officer.
Bucko	become a “google campus ambassador”
Morlark	Organise bugflug @ lan

LUG

For reference, both the LUG constitution and agreement with compsoc are available on the LUG‘s website at http://www.wuglug.org.uk/. Additionally the terms `LUG’ and `GLUG’ are deemed to be interchangeable as desired.

The LUG‘s constitution was generally agreed to be acceptable to Compsoc, although Kim objected to the LUG liaison being a voting exec position.

The proposed agreement between the LUG and the compsoc exec was then discussed.

Kim pointed out that any money or travel arranging by the compsoc exec will have to be with sensible cash bounds. Laurence said that he thinks the LUG would be expecting the compsoc exec to allocate a fixed sum at the start of the year within which the LUG would have to remain. Mulletron said that he thought any money for the LUG‘s use should be included in the budget and agreed with the exec on an annual basis based upon funds available and planned events. Odd_bloke said that the LUG would be voting in its fist organising committee on Wednesday and that the precise amount and nature of funding should be discussed further after this event. A good basis may be what the LUG would receive if it were a society. Bruce said that the current minimum amount of funding any union society receives is £75 from the union.

Mulletron asked if the exec would like a funding request for the remainder of the year once a LUG organising committee has been formed, and Candle said he thought that would be a good idea.

Subject to the above discussion the agreement was unanimously agreed by the compsoc exec.

Changes to academic events

Polar reported that the previously published IBM lecture had been cancelled by IBM due to an event clash. IBM offered to reschedule it for next term of 3pm on the same day. Polar said he had sent an email asking for 3pm on the same day, and was awaiting a response from IBM.

Polar also said that the location of the perl tutorials had been changed to L5 from a room in DCS. Laurence reported that he had asked DCS to advertise the tutorial on the projector. Candle suggested that flyers outside L3 and in DCS would be a good idea to promote both the perl tutorials and IBM lecture events. Polar said that the perl tutorials will also be announced in a first year CS lecture (professional skills) and DCS will also be allowing the use of perl for that module’s coursework.

Candle asked who will be meeting the IBM guest lecturer, Polar said he would speak to Yvonne about it. Candle said it would most likely be him and Polar who meet the lecturer.

Pub crawl

Kim reported that he event was organised 2 weeks in advance and he asked Candle to said an email but it did not get done. Polar said that the first some people knew about it was the event appearing on the website and although a valuable tool the website is not a good medium to relay information about events existing to the members. Bucko said it is vital that someone makes sure an exec member attends such events. Candle said that is was poorly advertised and we must make sure this does not happen again in future.

Laurence floated the idea of re-organising and well publicising the pub crawl at some point in the next few weeks, and it was decided to try and re-organise this for Thursday of week 9.

Kim said that he has panned a bowling social Wednesday week 10 from 2 or 3pm onwards. He said that he hopes most people will be able to get a lift there. Candle asked Kim to add an event for the xmas meal. Kim reported that the meal is booked but we are still waiting for the Virgin and Castle to send us the cost and menu. It will be taking place Saturday of Week 9 at 3pm.

Lack of organisation

This, and the following `lack of…’ items are in response to several emails to the exec list citing these as problems the exec currently have, and hence need to address.

Bucko said he felt this is caused by there being no well defined person to ensure jobs get done. This situation has been partially rectified by having a joblist. Fred said that in general tickets should be filed to individual tasks and not just global `do foo’ tickets (e.g. `Organise LAN’).

Lack of communication

Bucko said that the random out of date newsletter did not help with communication. Candle said that the person who saids an email to member@ must not authorise it, but get another exec member to proof read it and authorise or reject it.

Bucko asked for newsletters at least once every two weeks and a draft to be sent to the exec list the day before sending it to members.

Fred said that if an exec member misses an exec meeting they must read the minutes, and all exec members should read the automatically generated bugzilla emails of unassigned tickets for any tickets they should be accepting.

Lack of responsibility

Bucko said that there seems to be far too much buck passing. Candle said that the entire exec should be at the LAN until the end to help clear up, although Kim pointed out that they usually are unless there’s a good reason.

Lack of society confidence

Bucko said he felt this was combination of all of the other points.

Fred said that he felt the main issue was a lack of events, and Bucko said socials in particular. Kim said the many members were unhappy with alcohol being banned at LANs.

Candle posed the question `How do we regain confidence?’. Bucko said that when DrWatson’s (Phil Stoneman) exec came to power they ran a counterstrike tournament with snacks to say `we’re the new exec, we do cool stuff’. Something new and fun would be a good idea, especially with ITS currently preventing us from running gaming. Kim said that it was very hard to come up wit new, original, socials and he would welcome suggestions but Bucko said it did not have to be a social.

Lack of forward planning

This item was addressed by going round the exec listing all the planned events.

Bucko reported 5 LANs booked and planned. Fred said that Loughborough want all the exec in IRC to discuss a possible join LAN, and Candle said 5:30 on IRC on Monday. Fred reported that network patches for LANs are sorted until further notice.

Kim reported the xmas meal, bowling, a pub crawl early next term, karting next term, something involving Wing Wa’s and possibly Alton Towers at the end of term 2 but more likely early term 3. Bucko asked about the possibility of paintballing, and Kim said he could talk to Paintball Soc and see what can be organised.

Fred said he has poked ITS regarding Igor and is still pestering ITS with regards to Crypt/Graveyard. Candle suggested that arranging a face to face meeting with ITS would be useful as they are ignoring our emails. Fred said he would do, and the Crypt and Graveyard are currently being setup by Covbob (Graham Hayward) and PlanarPlatypus (Peter Ellis). Kim reported that Amoyra had offered the use of his room on campus if it was required to access insomnia.

Fred added that he would schedule a tech team meeting for LAN tech stuff.

Polar reported an IBM guest lecture which should be in week 8. There are also possible guest lectures from Microsoft, Red Hat and Kubuntu pending replies to emails sent. The are also possible tutorials from PlanarPlatypus on Python and the Center for Scientific Computing pending response. Kim suggested that a C tutorial for physicist’s term 2 modules would be good.

Morlark reported the LUG, BUGFLUG, LUG elections and regular tutorials.

Candle reported another clothing order and the programming competition, to be launched in week 8.

Bruce reported flyers for various events and the AGM in week 5 of term 2.

Tim suggested mini-lans on Friday evenings with laptops in lieu of gaming, and Bucko said he was considering it.

Any other business

Fred said he needed a new network card for bong as one has died, and mentioned the IRC rules. Bruce said that the IRC rules are on the website and if Fred choose a new network card he would get it ordered.

Fred said it would be nice to choose a `Google campus ambassador’ as we could get free stuff from Google, including pizzas. Candle dominated Fred, however Bucko said he would do it depending on what was involved.

Polar asked about organising a LUG event at the LAN, and Mulletron suggested a BUGFLUG at the LAN. Bucko said that that sounded fun.

Present: Bruce Bucko Candle Fred Kim Polar

Apologies: Laurence

Hursley

It was thought that there were too few people to pay for the union coach. A minibus and cars was suggested. It was pointed out that there may be a cancellation fee for the union coach that has already been booked. Candle thought that the fee for cancellation may be up to 10%. The cost of the coach is approximately 500 Great British Pounds, making the fee up to 50 GBP. The cost of hiring the coach to the society was thought to be much more on even a 50% increase on signups between the meeting and the trip. The trip has already been advertised in 1st and 2nd year lectures with the careers service and Tiskin has also mentioned it. There have been posters placed in the DCS common room, work rooms and been projected in the entrance. Posters have also been placed in the maths entrance and undergraduate common room, the physics concourse including L3, Rootes Social Building, on notice boards outside the arts centre and union south and on the compsoc notice board in union north. The level of publicity was not thought to be able to be increased significantly. It has been noted that there is a post-graduate open day and other careers information fairs and activities on the day of the trip, which may have caused the reduced uptake of the event.
The topic then turned to whether IBM would be happy with us sending about 16 people when they were expecting a much larger turnout. Polar will call Yvonne tomorrow to check. If the event does go ahead, the source of the lunch for the journey would be best told of the scale and at what time people would be buying lunch. It was noted that there were union shops open or Costcutters. Bucko suggested that the 1.5l crystalline water would be useful as it was cheap and would provide an alternative to fizzy drinks. Candle was put in charge of organising the food as he would be attending the trip.

Loughborough University

Loughborough University have proposed joint lans during the Christmas and Easter holidays at Loughborough. This was thought to be a good idea as gaming does not currently exist. The proposal was to send about 20 people for a weekend. Transportation was discussed with the idea of a compsoc van or minibus to transport equipment or by train. It would be 80 GBP for a union minibus for the journey to and from the university from Warwick. It was thought that as it was during the holidays that people would largely be able to get lifts with parents and small groups of friends may be travelling together. The idea was thought to be a good idea as it would allow a larger and different variety of games. If people wanted to organise transport through the society, putting it in the comment field would be useful as early as possible. Signups closing a week before the event would allow time for society transport to be arranged if enough people wanted it. Kim pointed out that the best time for future lans of this type would be the first weekend after term ends. This may be difficult to implement as different universities may end term on different dates. Fred has been asked to ring Loughborough regarding possible transport between the station and the university.

At this point we tried to checkup on last week’s joblist though as the secretary was absent, no-one had a copy to hand.

Topic Rules

There were no issues or objections raised with the rules that bucko had produced. A quick list of rules was made during the meeting:
Don’t overuse memes, troll, flood, use annoying scripts or put content not suitable for work in the channel, this includes porn or anything deemed unsuitable (including screamers (sounds that are not suitable at work). If an item is dubious, an op may wait for a complaint before kicking.
To control the ability of people to flood the channel, it was thought a BadgerBOT plugin would be best as there is already one that has the ability to detect flooding so another would be needed to link with the api of the first specifically for flooding the channel. Three lines in three second was thought to be appropriate as people are unable to type three proper sentences in three seconds. If this plugin was operational, BadgerBOT would then have the ability to kick people. The exec agreed that there had to be no possibility of any user abusing this through any other plugin. If this was not guaranteed then policing this in the old fashioned method would be used. A member of the BadgerBOT development team’s maturity was questioned. It was pointed out that the member in question already had the ability to kick people in any channel and the abuse through BadgerBOT would be easily traceable. It was originally suggested that BadgerBOT should have halfops, though this would not allow the protection against the ops in the channel flooding so full ops have been agreed upon being instated. +a was suggested but quickly dismissed in case BadgerBOT needed to be kicked.

Budget/Spending

The exec discussed the current status of accounts.
The exec decided to move away from the stance that past execs have taken and not minuting the exact status of the accounts.
The recent failure of the DCS cupboard was pinpointed to the switch inside the cupboard during the power blip that affected campus systems widescale. A new switch will be ordered as a replacement.

Game Coding Event

VGDSoc has not got back to Polar. We know that VGDSoc have booked B2.13/B2.14 from 7pm on Friday. The connection from ITS is the information that is being waited upon. Apparently, VGDSoc has emailed ITS, Covbob is checking as well and Polar has emailed them to gather the information. The techteam should be attend with equipment at the beginning. Fred will organise this. It was noted that “Team Nuclear” is the only compsoc team that is planning to enter at this point. A number of people in the room did discuss entering as well.

Techteam Cupboard Key

Euan’s Key has been collected from him. It has been decided to be reassigned to Crazy_Piglet.

Lan (Week 8)

This is the week after next. Signups are opening this Wednesday. The events system does not have working mac address fields or seating preference options. Members should put these in the comment field or, if they wish them not to be known to everyone on the internet, email lan at bucko dot me dot uk. Signups will open at 10pm due to the trip to IBM Hursley and LUG Tutorial.

Flyers

Kim’s thought the flyers aimed at maths and physics students should not be produced till after gaming was organised. This was thought unacceptable.
Polar will be making posters and flyers to advertise the guest lecture that is a week on Wednesday.

Gaming

Gaming in Social Studies will occur once ITS fit the room with computers. This is not a long term option though as they will not be 24 hour access next year. Amorya is looking into the possibility of computers in psychology.

Christmas Dinner Social

The exec thought that this had to be special otherwise it would be a pub social with different food.
The Virgin & Castle was thought to be the ideal venue, though as it has currently not been booked it may not have space. Kim will be phoning tomorrow to book. It was decided to book for 30 people and then possibly reduce the number as it would then guarantee us the space so would be easier to reduce than choose a lower number then increase. This will be Saturday of week 9. The exec decided that if The Virgin & Castle was unavailable then The Old Clarence would not be a suitable alternative.

Bowling

Kim is organising a bowling social on Wednesday of week 10.

Newsletter

An apology should be sent with the next newsletter regarding recent communication.

Resulting Joblist

Polar to call Yvonne tomorrow regarding Hursley trip.
Candle to cancel coach booking.
Candle to organise food and transport if the Hursley trip does take place.
Fred to talk to Loughborough University regarding transportation and dates for LANs.
Bruce to write irc rules.
Bruce to tell Faux to write a flood protection script for #compsoc.
Fred to organise techteam for Game Coding Event.
Polar to design flyers for guest lecture.
Bruce to print flyers for guest lecture.
Kim to book Christmas meal tomorrow.

Present (Exec listed first)

Bruce Tinton (Bruce)
Andrew Wheat (Candle)
Frederick Emmott (Fred)
Laurence Hurst (Laurence)
Arun Prasannan (Polar)
David Buckley (Bucko)

Sadiq Jaffer (Sadiq)
Daniel Watkins (Odd_bloke)

Agenda

Issues
Academic Events
Xen
Exec tickets
Lug
Any other business

Issues

A number of issues were raised on the exec mailing list regarding the society. These included a lack of forward planning, lack of open decision making process, lack of follow up to items which are assigned to people.

Sadiq suggested that it would be a good idea to draw up a calendar of planned events so that people, including the exec, know what is coming several weeks in advance. Candle reported that he has very nearly sorted the coach for the IBM Hursley trip. Bucko suggested promoting it in lectures. Sadiq said it was important to fill the coach if at all possible, otherwise the society will not be able to recoup the cost of the coach despite IBM‘s subsidy.

Sadiq noted that there has been a lack of follow up to items assigned during exec meetings and someone needs to chase people up. It was agreed that the president would be the one to chase people up, and the secretary should produce a job-list to address these issues.

Sadiq said that he felt there was a lack of an open decision making process and Laurence reported that some people had expressed that they found exec meetings inaccessible. Those present generally agreed that exec meetings would seem more accessible once gaming started again and much of the problem was that people were unwilling to make a special trip to campus just for the exec meeting. Sadiq suggested that less discussions should be held on the exec list, in the interest of making the decision making process more open. Candle agreed and said he felt that discussions should not be held on the exec list, it should be for agenda items and contacting the exec only. Odd_bloke said that gentoo had three main mailing lists, one which is restricted to very few core people, one for developers which is open and where most of the discussion takes place and one for users with trivial requests.

Fred said that someone recently publicly published sensitive portions of the exec list and asked if a warning followed by removal from the exec list would be appropriate if this happened again. Sadiq pointed out that the exec list should not be a secretive list.

It was also pointed out that things got very heated on IRC until the LAN and then cooled down quite a bit after. It was suggested that the lack of socials may be affecting attitudes within the society.

Bucko asked that it be minuted that there is a pub crawl organised as a number of exec members were unaware of this.

Academic Events

Polar reported that the IBM Hursley trip is the Wednesday after next. He asked how much we should be charging and that it was £4 last year. He also requested that we advertise the trip with posters, flyers etc in a bid to fill the coach. Fred asked about the DCS projector, and Polar reported that he had already organised for the event to be advertised there, and the event will also appear on DCS’ website.

Polar also said that he was now in contact with another person at Accenture and is waiting to hear back from them. He also reported that most events are on the website. There are a number of tutorials coming up, but not set in stone yet and a poll on the topic for a Microsoft lecture is in progress on the forums. Sadiq mentioned that it would be worth talking to Acehole to see if Rackspace would be interested in giving a guest lecture.

Polar said that DCS were concerned that current second year CS have not been offered any functional programming tuition, and that there was a possibility that a postgraduate would be willing to give a prolog tutorial. He also said he would like an academic wiki on the website, and proposed having an academic section on the existing wiki used for the tech-team to save having another installation. Polar was unsure if the O’Riely membership was in the name of Compsoc or the LUG. Laurence said he thought it might be the LUG, but Polar should check with Seren (Sophie Marshall) to be sure.

Polar added that he would like to create a ‘how to do stuff on our servers’ area on the website for the benefit of freshers.

Xen

Fred reported that PlanarPlatypus (Peter Ellis) and Covbob (Graham Hayward) have volunteered to setup the Xen servers. Polar suggested more information be put on the techteam wiki about the services we offer and Fred agreed this was a good idea.

Exec tickets

It was requested that if be minuted that the exec should file buzilla tickets on all issues emailed to the exec mailing list. Bucko pointed out that Bugzilla is difficult to log into. It was agreed that both the President and Secretary should keep an eye out for ‘ticketable’ emails in the hope that they would not both miss one.

Lug

Sadiq said that there was no formal structure to the LUG and suggested this was a bad idea. Polar said that he felt the LUG was a special interest group, within Compsoc. Sadiq pointed out that no-one knows who is running the LUG. or whose responsibility it is to organise things within and for the LUG. He suggested that the LUG should elect a couple of people to put in charge of organising both executive matters and organisation matters within the group.

Odd_bloke said that although there is hostility between Compsoc and the LUG it is hard to characterise it. Candle replied that the hostility was not open hostility but he did not feel welcome to attend LUG meetings. Sadiq said he felt it was important to agree a formal relationship between both parties.

Bruce reported that the LUG had suggested that he go on an AV training course to be able to use centrally timetabled room’s AV equipment for free but Sadiq said that a number of people in Compsoc had been on the course already. The LUG were not aware of this when the suggestion was made.

Any other business

Fred suggested that someone should suggest Catalyst to Morlark for the new ‘WUGLUG BUGFLUG’ event.

Polar said that he would like posters for events, and Fred suggested flyers with all planned events on for pigeon holes. Bruce said he could turnaround any posters or flyers which needed reproducing within a day.

Sadiq said he would like to see more moderation in #compsoc and incremental bans as kicks are not working. He also suggested banning Karma in #compsoc, which Laurence agreed with. Bucko said he liked karma in #compsoc and Candle said that it should be left as it is.

Fred reported that he is still waiting for ITS to open SSH ports to Insomnia so that he can begin work on restoring it as the resnet gaming server.