Today I (DavidBell) had a meeting with Simon Thompson regarding Compsoc. The idea was to discuss guest lectures but the discussion developed into a general talk about Compsoc as a whole. I will first cover guest lectures and then cover other Compsoc stuff.
Guest Lectures
Generally with a guest lecture we should do the following:
- Buy the speaker a dinner after or lunch before. Various people would attend like some staff member and compsoc people.
- Pay for travel and hotel costs for the speaker (Note: Kent do on-campus visitor accommodation)
Simon Thompson has suggested we talk to:
- Michael Kolling (login: mik) Who is kind of the head of the Sun Center of Excellence program. He will have lots of contacts within Sun.
- Ian Utting. I spoke with Ian already today so I we can contact him for actualy people to contact within Sun
- Sue Fundry (IBM). This is the contact at IBM who we've worked with before.
- Placement Office. The placement office in Computer Science should be able to help with talking to companies and getting contacts.
- Alumni Office - Getting ex-students now working at companies to come give talks is a very good idea. They are more likely to want to do so and to want to give something back to Kent (perhaps...). We can talk to the Alumni office about this.
- Ian Marshall - Ian apparently knows somebody at IBM who we should contact.
Simon also had the following recommendations:
- We should not rush to have hundreds of lectures. We should have say 2-3 external speakers per term. We can have on top of that 2-3 internal speakers and student speakers.
- We should contact smaller companies, such as Yahoo, rather than just trying for IBM/Sun/Microsoft.
Compsoc
Simon and I went on to talk about Compsoc in general. Simon thus far had not been involved, when perhaps we should have involved him sooner. We have always had strong ties to Computer Science Systems but not so much to Computer Science in the political or academic sense. I think we can now build stronger ties with Computer Science.
Simon mentioned previous Planet Lazer trips, and we both feel that we should organise these things again. He is very encouraging about guest speakers and social events with the department and I stress that we should try and encourage working together.
He suggested we should organise Staff vs. Students Planet Lazer games. He suggested we Staff and Students meet every few weeks, informally, to have feedback from staff to students and from students to staff. He asked about our status with the SU so I have done some fact finding on the SU: KentUnionInfo
Generally I left the meeting feeling very pleased. Simon hinted that the department can provide financial support also for things like guest lecturers. Simon and I shall remain in contact and of course I hope that the society does in future also.
Other Comments
I will be sending this page to Simon Thompson so he may write anything that I missed or I did not convey correctly.