It’s been quite a busy time. As planned, the GIS SIG, AGM and award ceremony took place in London at the RAF Club on 1 November. The GIS SIG was a great success with attendees learning how and how not to produce schematic maps – the choice of angles, straight lines or curved lines is all important. Also, included in the programme was a brief on the recent ICC in Paris as it’s important that members know how our involvement with the ICA is working. There is a meeting of ICA chairs of commissions in Vienna about now and I have suggested that there should be regular reports on the work of the commissions published in a journal by the ICA. The AGM went well and after it had been concluded I presented Mike Wilburn with the NewMapmaker award sponsored by National Geographic.
The following day, Council met in London at Prospect House. The sales of ‘Cartography – an introduction’ have been so good that it looks as though we’ll have to do a reprint. The Programme Committee is busy putting together the 2012 programme which at the moment includes 4 Restless Earth events at schools and they are beginning to put together the schedule for our Annual Symposium at the Basingstoke Country Hotel from 13-15 June where the theme will be ‘Mapping the Global Village’. Also, I’m delighted to be able to tell you that Dr John Peaty from DGC has volunteered to take over as the convener of the HMMG – thank you John. After the Council meeting we had the first meeting of the 2013 committee. As you’ll be aware it’s the 50th anniversary of the foundation of BCS in 2013 so we are planning to have a number of special events to celebrate the occasion. So far we have just an outline in the form of an initial calendar of events which we’ll build upon.
The Restless Earth event at Altrincham Boys GS was a great success so much so that we’ve been asked to go back and run the exercise again next year. We were helped by 5 Royal Geographical Society (RGS) ambassadors who are undergraduates at Manchester University. This worked extremely well for all concerned and I hope we’ll be able to call upon support from other RGS ambassadors at future schools events. In our busy start to November, Steer Davies Gleave also hosted our next Better Mapping Seminar in London run by AGI and BCS. As these seminars continue to be so well attended we plan to run more from Spring 2012.
The next major event is the Mapping Showcase on 1 December at the Emirates Stadium under the LMF banner. The UKCC meets on 10 January. We have a BCS stand at the DGI Show in London 24-25 January and the UK GEOForum Annual Lecture is on 26 January at the RICS when the speaker will be Mike Parker.
At the last Council meeting I undertook to write a page entitled, ‘Why Join BCS’. I have done that and it will appear on this blog also. If there is anything you think I should add please leave me a comment. So far this year we’ve attracted about 85 new members and I’d like to see if we can make it 100! So, perhaps you can use ‘Why Join BCS’ to make this happen. Anyone who applies for membership now will have membership until 31 December 2012 – an ideal Christmas present for someone?!
Best Wishes
BCS President
No comments:
Post a Comment