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Dear Member,

I would like to wish you a warm welcome to the British Computer Society (BCS) London Central Branch. Every year the branch aims to have an inclusive and diverse programme of events which everyone can attend and add to continuous professional development through knowledge transfer and networking. I believe we had another successful programme of events.

The year started with a very special guest, Professor Jim Norton, the BCS President 2010/2011 recognising academic achievement by awarding a student prize consisting of a year’s free BCS membership and a cash prize of £150 to one student from each of the following universities: City University London, Greenwich University, London South Bank University, London Metropolitan University, Middlesex University and University of East London. The student prize awards were followed by Ian Hughes who shared the some of the history of human communication and how the current wave of emerging technology has affected social change and business. October saw Mike Waterston provide techniques for reducing the culture gap between IT professionals and the Executives. Later in October we held the “Meet the President Dinner” at which attendees had the opportunity to engage with the BCS President Jim Norton over a lovely meal. In November Peter Parkes told how we could make soft skills less hard through NLP.

In January we celebrated Turing’s 100th Birthday by inviting Dr Sue Black to discuss what Turing did for us along with Dr Peter J Bentley, Julian Wilson and Sarah Winmill. In February we collaborated with BCS FACS Specialist Group who organised Professor Bernie Cohen to talk about enterprise modelling using projective analysis and looked at an NHS case study. Science week celebrations saw Dr George Buchanan and Jacques Chueke discuss recent research on HCI Design on new types of interaction. The second event in March saw Allan Kelly discuss what is Agile and why Agile is Beneficial.

In April Richard Newton discussed how we can get outsourcing and offshoring right by looking at lessons learnt to find the right balance between onshore and offshore events. In what was scheduled to be our last event in May David Wood discussed how connected devices will change the world. Also in May we held the ever popular Doctoral Consortium which attracted over 40 PhD students to discuss their research and develop their presentation skills. In July we organised a final event on how to use social media for business effectively. Wendy Kier discussed techniques in Twitter and Sam Russell provided insight into making Facebook pages super effective.

Thanks & Remembrance

The committee were shocked and saddened to hear of the death of Tony Miller who had served 30 years on the committee, with particular responsibility for the printing of the annual mailing and the welcoming of new members. He died just before he was due to be presented with the BCS Certificate of Appreciation to add to his 25 years long service award.

Thank you to Jim Norton, BCS President 2010-2011, all the speakers, BCS FACS and the committee members of the branch who sacrifice a lot of their time and put lots of energy into providing the programme of events. If you’d like to join us on the committee do come and speak to us at our meetings.

Funmi Adeusi

Chair, BCS London Central Branch, September 2012