AGM Minutes

The minutes for UWCS's 2019 AGM, held on 2019-02-22

These notes represent the discussion held during various sections of the presentation at the AGM.

Gaming / LAN

Ryan brought up that collaborating with other societies might be a good start towards improving attendance

Toby suggests possibly running some Smash Bros events.

Jakub suggested adding a forum to our website. David I pointed out that we have a Discord. Sam pointed out we do actually have a =#looking-for-group= channel which we don't use. Callum pointed out we have a Steam group. We all sighed in fond memories of Steam groups existing. John suggested adding a sort of looking-for-group system added to warwick.gg. Edwin suggested adding a game indicator for the seating plan.

Jaeseok suggested that a massive problem is that the computers in the DCS are somewhat limited. David I explained how catastrophic the server crash was in terms of removing gaming.get. Several people emphasised the point that there isn't much to do. Aiden suggested a video-game streaming service in order to open up the options.

Alistair suggested that Bad Film Soc was an attraction at Gaming. Amelie pointed out that we can't really advertise that we do that due to licensing issues. The point of having some scheduled events during gaming remains.

Alex suggested having some, even lower-tech replacements for gaming-get. Suggesting memory sticks that simulate it.

Edwin suggested moving to Maths/Stats. David I pointed out that such a move may not be possible, because it's not our departments and they might not let us. Suggested using Wine instead.

Academia

Scott pointed out that the publicity for academic events is poor. No arguments there.

Alistair pointed out that the Engineering department ran workshops on app development and they were fairly popular.

Toby pointed out that the programming workshops were just wrong. At the end of a busy week, essentially just helping freshers with CS118. David II disagrees slightly that the timing is wrong, saying that while that might be fine for workshops but isn't really a great time to learn much. Alex dis-disagrees with David II. His point is that no society should be running events that crash with themselves. He thinks that we should try and find a two-hour slot during the middle of the day to allow for some more structure - say a one hour lab followed by a one hour talk. Picking a more "thematic" topic, something which can be built on week to week and is accessible to a beginner (intro to Web Development, for example).

John pointed out that if we want people from outside departments, we can target programming modules specifically.

Edwin pointed out that there are not many academic text channels in the Discord server. Amelie seconded this point. Maybe having different channels for different themes would be useful.

A member seconded John's opinion about modules from other departments being worth targeting for the society. Points out that we could supplement (somewhat less than ideal) teaching quality from other departments.

Emily pointed out that serial attendance might be quite difficult to maintain. Suggested introductory packs for certain languages/technologies followed by help afterwards. Emily suggested moving outside the CS department.

Alex pointed out that we've not historically been allowed to make revision guides for modules, but drop in sessions to assist people might help a lot.

WASD

Callum pointed out that the timing meant we may have had fewer runners. Partly due to bad publicity, partly due to the shorter distance between the two events, as pointed out by Sam.

Alistair suggested having things at the events like lightning talks or showcases.

Emily pointed out that we had a small problem with the atmosphere in the room. Everyone had to be reasonably quiet for the stream not to pick up the audio.

David II suggested maybe bringing some board games in for the event, or running gaming events alongside it.

Socials

Scott suggested using Tea++ as the venue for the previously mentioned academic help sessions.

Amelie pointed out it's a bit inconvenient to run. Ryan pointed out that the event isn't scalable - even if it got actually big we'd be taking up a large amount of space in a small cafe at 12pm.

Alternative venues were suggested as well, Jakub suggested the Dirty Duck and Alistair suggested The Graduate.

Membership Fee

Toby asked how much LAN could cost in the future. Probably be free while it's in LIB2, probably a couple of pounds if we have significant expenses.

It was pointed out that Freshers' LAN should probably be free.

Alistair asked about the fresher retention. We don't really keep data on that, but as something that we need to think about it's worth bearing in mind.

About 90% of those in attendance supported changing the membership fee to £0 in a show of hands.