Minutes for SGM, Summer Term 2005

Welcome

The meeting opened at 5pm in COLT2, Computing Octagon. David Bell welcomed the 5 non-committee members present to the meeting.

Apologies from the Committee

Adam Sampson sends apologies, and expresses his regret at being unable to be present.

Tim Donovan was not present due to illness.

Committee members present

Motions

There were no motions submitted, so no formal voting took place.

Committee Reports

The Committee members made reports so that the society knows what they have been doing.

  1. President's Report
    • The new and revived Compsoc used the previous SGM to elect two sets of a committee and senior officer, one for this term, and one for next year, and to approve the constitution. The previous interim committee took the initiative to replace compsoc1, and the new machine is sited in SE109 in the Computing Laboratory, providing local and remote services to people with accounts. Over the year, we have begun to use compsoc1 to offer Windows applications and freely-available music to network users. The IRC network has been moved to an updated version of the server software, and renamed to KentIRC. A number of Officers have been selected as Network Operators, and new policies put in place. Network services such as nickname registration are now available. We have begun developing a new website, and one option being looked at is a collaborative wiki, which is currently being hosted by Computer Science, although we will continue to use Notnet to host the main site for the time being.
  2. Treasurer's report
    • We are beginning to look at our options for a new compsoc1 machine. The current plan is a rackmount machine, in the Computer Science racks. The benefit of this would be physical security and UPS protection. We are looking to build the machine ourself to reduce costs, with one of the main aims being a large amount of disk space, although the expensive component is the case. When we know how much money we have available, the treasurer will produce The Society needs a staff member liason in order to access the society bank account. While this is currently David Barnes, he no longer wishes to fill this role. David Barnes is required however to move the account holding to the new treasurer and staff liason. The two options for new staff liason were Fred Barnes or Colin Johnson, and the treasurer announced his decision to make Fred Barnes preliminary staff liason, and to begin the process of contacting the bank.
  3. Secretary's report
    • Membership now stands at 58, of which 55 have compsoc1 accounts, and 29 are officers. A discussion with the Durham University Compsoc has yielded the ideas of weekly meetings (even if this is just a social event), and the creation of a library of technical books and CDs for members to borrow. This will be Lizzie's last SGM as secretary, and she expressed her thanks for being elected and hopes she has done a good job.
  4. Senior Officer's report
    • Adam Sampson submitted a written report which was read out to the members. The key points follow: UKCIRC is now KentIRC and is running on the latest version of Bahamut. Network services are now available that let you register nickname and channels. A team of network operators is available in #compsoc. Computer Science are lending us three RaQ 550s, one of which has been set up with Linux and is running in the machine room. Its name is soyuz.kent.ac.uk, and if anyone wants an account, they need to email the officers list. We have applied to Computing Service for an SBS connection in order to run game servers for the SBS network. We have some old PCs to use as thin client, although some RAM is required. If you have any, please email azz at offog dot org. We are bringing together the new website, based on a wiki system, to be hosted on the CS cluster. Computer Science are looking into getting Compsoc an external SSH gateway for compsoc1. The Windows applications hosted on compsoc1 have been upgraded. Volunteers to help with design or distribution of new Compsoc posters are very welcome. If you want to help, please email the officers list. Thanks to the hard work from the officers so far. If you wish to help, there are plenty of ideas on the wiki.

Any Other Business, including a chance for Society members to question Committee Members

Note: a lot of discussion ocurred during the committee member reports, but has been collated here.

The new wiki was further discussed. The difficulty of theming was raised, but the consensus seemed to be that it was fine as is. The benefits of access control and page locking were also mentioned.

David Bell is currently keeping syouz up to date.

The location of the core IRC server was discussed. It is currently on compsoc1, and while running it on soyuz would potentially afford us the benefit of UPS protection (against the power cuts we seem to regularly have), it was pointed out that if Computer Science wanted the RaQ back, we would lose our IRC server temporarily.

Any incoming SSH server to allow members external access to compsoc1 would be administered by Computer Science, on Computer Science hardware. This could possibly happen by the end of term.

The idea to put the library in a cupboard in SE105 was raised. If it was lockable, the key would either need to be with an officer/committee member, or left at the CAS office.

The issue of advertising to potential new members next year was raised. We should consider getting a stall at Fresher's Fair. Another option is flyers distributed to new students, whether by hand on campus, or via the welcome pack sent to students before they arrive. There is the possibility of getting 5000 flyers for £100, but this needs to be investigated further.

Ben Murdoch-Smith mentioned that there will be another Taglan soon, and wondered if we wanted to have it affiliated with Compsoc in some way. Potential on campus sites were discussed, with the main problem being that people can't stay overnight, something that can be done at Dot Cafe. Ben felt that if a Taglan continued as a regular occurrence next year, then he would be able to negotiate a discount, creating the opportunity to give the money saved to Compsoc.

The problem of not being able to link nicknames on the KentIRC NickServ was raised. Currently, if you have registered JoeBloggs, your nickname has to be JoeBloggs to identify to it, and not JoeBloggs|home, or similar. We do have the option of nickname linking, where a nickname, such as JoeBloggs, can be linked to several other nicknames like JoeBloggs|lab and JoeBloggs|away. However, one would still have to re-identify, but some IRC networks allow your identification to follow you. The possibility of asking Fred Barnes to modify the Bahamut code to allow this was raised.

And finally, the issue of nickname and channel expiry was briefly mentioned. Initially the expiry period for both was left at ~30 days, but it has now been upped to ~350 days.

Close

The meeting was closed at approximately 6pm.