BCS President's Report January 2012

I hope you all enjoyed the Christmas break and a Very Happy New Year.

The UKCC met on 10 Jan in London and the second draft of the Review will be circulated prior to the next Council meeting on 7 Feb. The Review seeks to clarify the financial arrangements and ensure that there is a proper return for members for monies spent.

The London Mapping Festival (LMF) Steering Group met on 17 Jan to discuss the programme for the coming year. Details will be available on the LMF website in due course.

BCS had a stand at the DGI Conference in London on 24-25 Jan and hopefully we will have some more new members as a result. THE UK GEOForum met the following day and that evening the Annual Lecture was given by Mike Parker the author of the book, ‘Map Addict’ – an excellent book and an equally enjoyable lecture.

Chipping Norton, then Kendal

The 2012 Restless Earth Schools programme starts next month with visits to schools in Chipping Norton and Kendal. Hopefully, we will have some support again from local RGS Ambassadors.

Thanks to all those who submitted abstracts of papers for the forthcoming Symposium in June. I’m told that it’s going to be difficult to include all the papers in the time available but the Programme Committee will be doing their best as always.

The cut-off date for submission of articles for the next edition of Maplines is 14 Feb. See our notes for contributors if you need any guidance.

As you may recall John Peaty from DGC has taken over as convener of the HMMG. Roger Hore has emailed all known HMMG members so if you haven’t had the email and wish to be involved please contact John on the HMMG contact form. The first suggested event is the Defence Surveyors Association Annual Seminar at Hermitage on 16 June.

We attracted 90 new members to the Society last year and only 40 members decided not to re-new their subscriptions which is a really pleasing result. So far this year we’ve had 9 new members so membership stands at about 630. Let’s try to make it 700 by the end of 2012.

The Council meets on 7 Feb in London and I’ll let you know about that meeting in my next report.

Best Wishes

Peter Jolly

BCS President

BCS President’s Report November 2011

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 50^th 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

Peter Jolly

BCS President