UK AVS+UNIRAS User Group
AGM Minutes
20 November 2000

1. Minutes of the last AGM (Minutes of 8th Nov 1999)

   These were moved for approval by Paul Hatton and seconded by Stuart Merrylees.

2. Matters arising from the previous minutes

   None.

3. Chairman's Report

   John Blair-Fish presented his report, reproduced below.

   The committee has met three times since the AGM. We have discussed enhancing services to members through the web site, organising a technical briefing day and the annual conference. As well as organising the programme for the conference Matt Cooper has volunteered to host a Technical Briefing Day in February and organise a Summer student project to convert existing AVS/Express applications into simple examples downloadbable from the web. Many thanks to Matt,

   After much discussion it has been decided to have two half day hands-on sessions at the Technical Briefing day to cover loading complex data into AVS/Express in the morning and Gsharp on Windows in the afternoon. There will also be half day surgeries on AVS/Express and Gsharp for those not wishing to attend the other sessions. The committee always welcome suggestions for Technical Briefing Days but we have found it is not always practical to use them as in the case of OpenGL from last year's conference.

   There has not been much traffic on the avs-users mailbase site we set up last year.

   Malcolm Austen has done the tedious job of moving the User Group web site from Exeter University and making it independent of any academic institution. He has also put a new membership form there which has produced eight new members including one German, one Swiss and one from USA. Thank you for all your help Malcolm.

   Much work is needed to enhance the web site and make it uptodate and topical. The committee is as always reluctant to use User group funds on outside consultancy. What do you think?

   .Arline Wilson has taken over the role of Treasury from Gina Woodward. There have been a lot of loose ends to tie up from the previous two User Groups and changing committee officers. The officers are still vouching here for their credibility with signatures! Arline will also try and tidy up the membership list but the committee is still not agreed on the definition of membership. Thank you Arline and Gina.

   Peter Kelly and colleagues at the AVS UK office have kept us uptodate on company news and developments especially with the merger with MUSE Company and committee news will soon appear on the User group web site.

   Finally 1 wish to thank Paul Hatton for hosting and organising the conference again and 1 am pleased that we have KrzyWof Nowinski, a representative of the Polish User Group, here.

   Discussion around the points brought out the details of the proposed Technical Briefing Day in February which will concentrate on providing hands on experience with data import into AVS/Express and techniques for integrating Gsharp PC and the Microsoft Office products.

   The idea of paying a student to produce some new worked examples for AVS/Express was aired. Matt Cooper said that there was a wealth of example data at Manchester which could be used. The problem seemed to be one of the timescales involved and the worry that a usable product may not emerge, given that a "summer student at Manchester would only have about 10 weeks to complete the project, and much of that time may be taken simply getting up to speed with the product.

   A more general request for people to submit "interesting" datasets was made.

   lan Curington said that there was a lot more data on the new release CD, and also onthe IAC ftp site.

4. Treasurer's Report

   This report was prepared by Gina Woodward and presented by Arline Wilson.

   The User Group funds remain stable. The deposit account stands at £16,666.22. Interest of £413.09 was transferred into the accounts and in addition a final payment of £759.47 was made from the former UK AVS User Group. A Web Domain Name cost the group £100.46 and committee expenses of £179.85 were made.

   The 1999 Confefence made a loss of £918.242 of which £600 was due to subsidies being offered to those institutions who had taken out 5 year subscriptions. This was a mechanism to return some fee to those sites to cover the period for which no fees were collected from those sites making annual payments.

   It is the view of the Treasurer that the funds are sufficient to continue the funding of User Group activites, and so there is still no need to introduce a membership fee. The comittee still reserves the right to resume charging a membership fee, should this become necessary.

5. Elections to the Executive Committee for 2000-2001

   All those commitee members who had not resigned reaffirmed their willingness to stand for election. The proposal to re-elect all those wishing to stand was made by Anthony Meehan and seconded by Alan Thornton. All those standing were elected unopposed

6. AOB

   The question of what to spend our accrued money on was discussed. Adding more examples for users on the website was seen to be important and Antony Meehan said we should spend some money on this. More Gsharp examples would be much appreciated by many. Peter Kelly said that he thought that the User Group could fill some of the gaps left by the lower level of presence of the IAC, and we should be able to complement, not compete. lan Curington wondered if an additional post could be funded at the IAC. The group thought that this would be too expensive.

   An outline of the types of examples which users would like to see at the IAC would help (email to AVS@iavsc.org)

   Frank Arnott asked if visits to see new hardware might not be interesting to some users of APC systems.

   Anthony Meehan said that something on artefacts in data visualisation would be welcome.

7. Date of Next Meeting

   The meeting agreed to coming back to Birmingham again. Paul Hatton will be the local organiser, and the dates will be 5th and 6th November 2001. The next AGM will be held at the User Group Annual Meeting, Birmingham, 2001.

Rob Fletcher
uAUug Secretary
17 January 2001