Term 3 Week 11 Meeting Minutes

Wait a minute, weren't we supposed to have some public meetings at some point? Anyway, here's some minutes.

Agenda

General

• Congrats on exams (hopefully you did well)
• WASD was fun
• Merch
  • Spares
  • another round in T1?
  • For publicity and prizes?
• We’ve missed some meetings
• Unless necessary, we’ll be holding smaller meetings throughout the summer with teams
• The yearly Discord restructure
  • rules channel needs updating
  • can we remove, condense or streamline anything?
  • move resources onto website, provide a single link

Welcome Week

• Tuesday:
  • Welcome to the Computing Society Talk (1pm?)
  • 11-1: DCS Social
• Wednesday:
  • 3pm Git Good (Sam Coy)
  • Evening Pub
• Friday: FNG (w/ Pizza)
  • Want scheduled things going on here
• Thursday: Wildcards event
  • Do we know anything about this?
• Linux 101 Labs on Wednesday and Thursday - You will be paid
• STEM Social (?)
• Society’s Fair

Academic

• Please give feedback on the RS118 stuff from Joey (thank you Joey)
• Git Good labs for T1W1 (again, thank you Joey)
• Need to discuss the types of academic events we’d want to run
• Lightning talks from students (2 per term)
• Hour-long talks from external speakers (ideally 2-3 per term)
• Cross-society Python course
  • Starting Week 1/2, lasting 5 or 6 sessions, will have supplementary material
  • Would anyone like to contribute? Should be 2 people total from the society
• Programming challenges (1 per term)

Gaming

• Fresher LAN with Esports - pls contact them about this
• Changes to/equipment for FNG?
• Move to Thursday from Week 1 onwards?

Social

• We need to hear your plans for Term 1
• How’s the sober vs non-sober ratio?
• What can we do at the Oaks? (is it literally just use of the kitchen)

Tech

• Tech Team?
• What are the main plans for summer?
  • 3D Printer
  • Website
  • Discord bot(s)
  • GamingGet / DCSGet
• New Server (?)

Treasurers

• Sponsorships secured, yay - Nettitude and The Oaks (both gold tier)
• $300 grant from Rust foundation
• Who have we reached out to? Status of other sponsors
• Can we wrangle back any sponsors from previous years?
• [the part where we list off the names of a bunch of tech companies]

Inclusivity

• How are things going? WhatsApp group membership, events
• Plans for Term 1? (ideally at least 2-3 socials)
• Do you need anything in particular?

Publicity

• Thoughts about branding rework (separate meeting?)
• WhatsApp chat for the new year, targeted at freshers
• State of current social media (Instagram, Discord, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter)
• Event design templates (Academic, Lightning Talks, Pub, FNG) - on Figma pls
• Weekly Schedule template design
• Leaflet design
• Banner design

Secretary

• Newsletter format change - put headers of events with hyperlinks to website pages that give more in-depth descriptions
  • Cuts down on the length of newsletters
  • Makes it easier to see everything without scrolling
  • Makes sure events are on the website

WE NEED A TERM 1 TIMETABLE

AOB?

Attendance

Present: Andreea, Kunal, Laurence, Joey, Keegan, Owen, Skiros, Matt, Preya

Late: Adam, Jenny, Alex, Constantinos, Brendan, Alex

Apologies: Max, Alia, Adam

Absent: Ella

Mysteriously Vanished off the face of the Earth: Felix

I've probably forgotten someone

Minutes

General

• Everyone finished exams, yay
• WASD was good - stress and pain, but actually raised money 🥳
• Merch
  • Most distributed
  • But some spares - anyone know anyone who might want some?
  • another round in T1? - later in term, to allow freshers
  • lanyards for welcome week as publicity - tshirts as well possibly
• Missed some meetings over the last term, but exams so 🤷‍♀️
• We’ll be holding smaller more focused meetings throughout the summer with smaller groups
  • So we have more than 5 mins per issue
• What are you personally hoping to achieve for next year? Put on Notion
  • Needed to add Laurence to it lol
  • Organized by roles, please do use
• The yearly Discord restructure
  • rules channel needs updating
    • some rules are quite unnecessary (nothing illegal/against ToS is pretty implicit)
    • numbering is weird
  • can we remove, condense or streamline anything?
    • Combine role menus, very confusing split up - Recently added references between role menu channels, but still confusing
  • move resources onto website, provide a single link, instead of channel per resource

Welcome Week

• Tuesday:
  • Welcome to the Computing Society Talk
    • Rip off last years slides, Keegan probably
    • Waiting for uni to alloc a time, hopefully will be something actually useful
  • 11-1: DCS Social
    • Want switches & stuff, and some exec to talk to freshers -- dept especially want inclusivity along
    • We don’t need to organize, just turn up
• Wednesday:
  • 3pm Git Good (Sam Coy)
    • Recheck Sam is still available, slides hardly need work
  • Evening Pub
    • At Phantom Coach, imagine the travesty of a trek for freshers
• Friday: FNG (w/ Pizza)
  • Want scheduled events happening within -- to drive engagement
  • Going to be a massive load of people, really need to prep
  • This and fresher LAN are our two main gaming recruitment oppurtunities
  • Have booking slots for VR
  • Get another headset? - Quest? otherwise we'd need new PC
  • Pepper Pizza instead of Papa Johns (cheaper, and think delivers to campus)
• Wildcards event
  • Skiros thinks BBQ - probably should go through uni paperwork this time
  • Dept said happy to finance -- chase up
• Linux 101 Labs on Wednesday and Thursday
  • Doesn’t really need updating, but needs to check -- change of desktop env
  • Joey desparately wants to replace Linux with GNU/Linux - And include a section on changing the desktop environment
  • Will be paid, poggers
• STEM Social (?)
  • A social to poke Bio/maths/stats soon
  • Maths WW BBQ last year was a mess -- free food in WW is likely to be very large
• Soc Fair Stand: - No info/allocation yet - wait for info from SU
  • Mostly reuse materials from last year
  • Had some brainteasers like Towers of Hanoi -- bit divided whether we should have
  • Bring 3D Printer/hardware gadgety thing for some engagement - EngSoc had something like this last year, worked well

Academic

• Please give feedback on the RS118 stuff from Joey
  • will run weeks 2 to 5 of term 1
  • please test exec (#exec-priv > Beta Testing to check)
  • Joey particularly wants to make sure basic Rust bits aren’t overlooked
• Git Good labs for T1W1 (again, thank you Joey)
  • Follows on from talk
  • Joey has made a sheet, some further resources linked as well
• Need to discuss the types of academic events we’d want to run
  • But no academics here
• Lightning talks from students (2 per term)
• Hour-long talks from external speakers (ideally 3-4 per term)
• Cross-society Python course
  • AI had good one last year, CodeSoc had one
  • Re-built, but probably mostly from AI’s
  • Starting Week 1/2, lasting 5 or 6 sessions, will have supplementary material
  • Would anyone like to contribute? -- Keegan, Joey, Owen
  • Will be at same time as Rust, but Python is for beginners, Rust for experienced programmers, so not much clash
  • Lecture style thing, with exercises
  • Switch “lecturer” - need to make sure are each fine
• Programming challenges 1 per term was good

Gaming

• Fresher LAN with Esports - pls contact them about this
• Changes to/equipment for FNG?
  • BUY MONITORS
  • Nothing people particularly need - 1 ask for retro consoles - emu
  • Consider PS5 or XB
• Ideally move FNG to Thursday, but need to pass through DCS
  • Probably going to take a while, maybe mid-term

Social

• Sober vs non-sober ratio aimed for 1:1, was more non-sober last term, partly because of covid cancellation
• Skiros actually email on time this time around for uni circles
• Ideas:
  • Restaurant crawl?
  • Ice skating trip
  • Wave -- absolutely
  • Circle at Oaks?
    • And make-your-own-Pizza?
    • Contractually needs one per term
  • Leam trip for freshers
    • Couple of pub trips there perhaps
    • Gets freshers to actually see Leam
  • Exec only social - some exec feel they don’t really know everyone yet - Early/before welcome week -- but some people unavailable then

Tech

• Tech Team? - as usual noone actually knows: ask Felix who is not here
• What are the main plans for summer?
  • 3D Printer - Now with Keegan
    • Remove MMU?
  • Website - new website
    • Skiros planning to redo over summer
    • Get publicity somewhat involved
  • Discord bot(s)
    • Scheduled announcements nearly done
    • Probably should remove message logging - GDPR lol
    • Auto sync discord events to website - dpy 2.0
    • Owen working on a few other bits
  • GamingGet / DCSGet
    • Talk to John about whats happening with Rust rewrite
• New Server (?)
  • Happening soonTM
• Talk to Josh/John about continuing/handover

Treasurers

• Nettitude and The Oaks Sponsorships (both gold tier)
  • Need to chase up Oaks contract
    • Try to get only advertise on Discord, instead of Insta stories as well
    • Fortnightly is a bit much really
  • And some money from Rust foundation - not a sponsorship
• If we want money from dept, need to ask for particular things, but they are happy to give
• Who have we reached out to? Status of other sponsors
  • Rejection from Jane Street, and kinda not from IBM
  • Ignored otherwise, Joey might try another round - from personal emails? as uwcs emails sometimes go to spam
• Can we wrangle back any sponsors from previous years?
  • Again ignored
  • TPP saga last year, probably not back again lol
• See if anyone can leverage their internship for a sponsorship

Inclusivity

• Had a couple of events - 12 at BBQ (but cancelled first time)
• Quite a few people on whatsapp, but not particularly active - couple of other people/socs advertise on there occasionally
• Plans for Term 1? (ideally at least 2-3 socials)
  • Welcome Week BBQ
  • ???
• Maybe some WC leaflets when we are doing main ones anyway
• Need to be a bit careful with recruitment for it

Publicity

• Only Andreea here, so will have another meeting for it soon
• Thoughts about branding rework (separate meeting?)
  • Didn’t want to clash with merch, but can probably change for new year
  • Probably a good idea to change, move towards dots instead of shield
  • Keegan: UWCS doesn’t have all that much meaning - separating UW and CS makes it understandable
    • Some sort of separator (colour like website or negative space)
• [Brendan times his arrival far too perfectly]
• Could do WhatsApp chat for the new year, targeted at freshers
  • Maths have a freshers chat, worth doing for us as well
  • Next couple of weeks ideally
  • Want to drag to Discord eventually
• State of current social media (Insta, Discord, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter)
  • Insta going fairly well - want to grow followers, but good engagement from current
    • Push at freshers fair
    • Tshirt giveaway to new followers?
    • Q&A on insta at results for freshers
    • Advertise on personal insta?? or exec takeovers
  • Post about WASD and merch handover, and results day
  • For results day, get on posts and cross promos
  • Discord: try to cut down on Orange/Pink spam (exec/grads) somehow
  • Facebook: auto cross posting from Insta, but noone uses so no more needed
  • LinkedIn: WASD post? -- probably best kept for event retrospectives
  • Twitter: oh no, anyway
• Event design templates (Academic, Lightning Talks, Pub, FNG) - on Figma plz
  • Publicity needs to familiarize themselves with Figma
  • Insta post, insta story, Discord banners
• Graphics generally get posted as needed, but templates mean can be posted for anything
• Maybe move publicty GC to Discord
• Weekly Schedule template design
• Leaflet design - need sponsors on
• and Banners, some broken
• Website design pass changes?

Secretary

• Newsletter format change - Keegan suggests put headers of events with hyperlinks to website pages that give more in-depth descriptions
  • Cuts down on the length of newsletters
  • Makes it easier to see everything without scrolling
  • Makes sure events are on the website
    • Requires website to actually be used
• Get events up to date on website
• Leaflet printing
  • Don’t use solarprint
  • Needs to get into welcome packs - to Lea in mid-September
  • FilmSoc used helloprint

This meeting somehow took less than 2 hours, well done everyone