On Apr 4, 3:15 pm, micro...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
> Clearly, a new APL Association can very
> easily be set up without the BCS, so the only issue is money
I agree with the first part, but I think the second is a bit of a
distraction. We're talking about a sum which was the profit from a
conference at a time where the BAA apparently DID benefit
significantly from membership of the BCS in terms of preparing and
marketing the event. We've had 20 years to spend the money, and the
BCS has made facilities available to us during this time, which we
have not used. Anyone who feels "robbed" has had 20 years to suggest
ways to use the money. I also suspect that the arguments that the BCS
is somehow acting inappropriately are probably unfair, we don't know
how they arrived at the decision to restructure special interest
groups, even if they did it with a financial motive, it may be
perfectly justifiable and in the interests of the majority of their
members.
So at the end of the day, I think the legal AND moral arguments for
this money still belonging to the BAA are actually fairly weak. And as
Stephen points out, we don't actually need this money to continue our
activities. If the activity level rises, there will be new money
available to the BAA from corporate sponsors. I do expect to see more
activity, there is a steadily growing trickle of new young APL
programmers into the community, unfortunately mostly outside the UK at
this point in time - but that will hopefully change. I believe that
half the membership of the BAA (aka "readership of Vector") is in fact
outside the UK already, and that this proportion has been steadily
growing as APLers outside the UK have signed up for Vector
subscriptions.
I think that the fundamental problem is that the BAA membership has
quite different aspirations from members of the BCS, which seems to be
some sort of guild for professional programmers. Our decision on
whether to stay or go should be based on what we are planning to do in
the future and whether we think the BCS is likely to help us achieve
that.
There is an argument that the BCS provides us with a platform on which
to market APL, but so far we have been unable to take advantage of
that. At Dyalog, we see young people who are either still studying, or
just out of University, as our main target for APL marketing. Most of
these people are probably studying something other than "Computer
Science". It seems fairly unlikely that many of these people will be
members of the BCS. Those of us who see ourselves as "professional
programmers" (hopefully, this includes all of the Vendors :-) should
arguably remain members of the BCS, and will (if we present the case
well) be able to arrange events to promote APL to fellow BCS members
through this membership. If we manage to interest a significant number
of IT professionals in APL (something that we WILL also be working
on), a different kind of APL interest group may reappear at the BCS.
My conclusion seems to be that the BAA is currently better off outside
of the BCS. At the same time, it should perhaps more clearly shift its
focus towards spreading "the good news" on the internet, and perhaps
also more clearly recognis(z)ing the fact that it is becoming an
international organization.
Morten Kromberg
Dyalog Ltd
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