Earlier this month, I hosted a couple of webinars with our Membership Product Manager, Darren O’Sullivan, to update volunteers on the progress of our membership campaign and, in particular, new resources that member groups can use to welcome new or potential members to their group. If you read a little further down, you can access the resources in this newsletter.
We also got to share a bit of good news, in the last three months, we have recorded growth in our membership – small signs are emerging that the hard work of repositioning membership benefits and reaching new audiences are beginning to produce results, although we are cautious with our optimism, April and May are our largest renewal months as historically fees were collected once a year and the impact of COVID-19 is still and will continue to be, felt by many.
In terms of opening up again to the world, we are finalising communications on advice to member groups, including plans to reopen our London office. Users of our London office are welcome to arrange appointments to view the premises and facilities before we open more widely; please write to me directly at jjeffery@bcs.uk, and we will work with our facilities team to arrange an appointment.
Best wishes,
Jon Jeffery Head of Community
BCS Promotional Material
As a member group, you play a significant role in the nurturing process for potential members, new members and existing members wanting to understand more about BCS.
To assist member groups in being able to share the proposition of BCS and how members can maximise the value they receive from membership we have developed some assets which can be used as part of an event, perhaps before an event or during networking.
Last year, we ran a (pilot) campaign named ‘Class of 2020’, which offered the graduates of 2020 a year of membership for £25. Following the campaign's success, we will be rolling this campaign out annually, and it will now be known as the Early Careers Rate. This rate will apply to AMBCS and MBCS grades and is open to anyone joining BCS for the first time or upgrading their existing student membership.
Recent graduates are the primary audience for this offer, but it’s open to anyone completing initial formal training who doesn’t already have a link with membership. For example, we’re welcoming those who are completing a coding boot camp, retraining or up-skilling programme.
We have a landing page for the campaign, which you will find here: https://campaign.bcs.org/earlycareers. We’re still evolving the media content on this page, but please feel free to share the link and the PDF postcards with anyone you think may be interested! We will shortly be posting some social media advertisements for this offer, too, so feel free to share those as well (or create your own!).
Note: If you are based internationally, there is a different link and assets available; please email groups@bcs.uk to request these.
A series of 10 x one-hour webinars covering a wide range of current initiatives and perspectives on how data is making our society better. 14 to 18 June – 11 -12 pm and 4 pm to 5 pm each day on Zoom.
Distinguished Fellow 2021
Help us celebrate the award's 50th Anniversary
This year we will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the BCS Distinguished Fellow award, which is our most prestigious award. We are asking for your help to mark this special year and nominate candidates.
In 1969, the Trustees of the British Computer Society approved the Distinguished Fellow of the BCS, and in 1971 appointed Edsger W Dijkstra the first DistFBCS. The roll of 32 Distinguished Fellows is at the following link: Roll of Distinguished Fellows | BCS They are people who have profoundly changed the way society benefits from information technology. They have made major contributions to the overall development of computing, and they have gained substantial recognition over an extensive and sustained career. They are not all members of the BCS and come from across the world.
50 years later, as Covid-19 rages across the world, information technology is at the very heart of the struggle to keep societies and economies together. Just imagine what lockdown would be like without computers, the Internet, the world wide web, e-commerce and social media etc. And the impact that the Distinguished Fellows have had can be clearly seen whether as business leaders or academics or both.
The nomination process opened on the 4th of May and closes at noon on the 18th of June. The process is short and straightforward and the link is Distinguished Fellowship (DistFBCS) | BCS. Please will you help us?
Community Forum Basecamp
Come and join the Community on Basecamp. It's a great place to chat with like-minded individuals, share best practice and engage with the BCS Swindon Team.
We currently have 10% of the community represented. However, we want to see an increase in the community's representation, so please encourage at least one of your committee members to sign up.
We want to celebrate organisational and individual excellence; those who are inspiring the next generation of IT professionals and helping to shape the future of IT, our industry and digital society.
Thursday 24 June 2021 Join internet legend Vint Cerf, eminent computer scientist Dame Wendy Hall and others as we take a planet-wide view of tech: how it can help the climate emergency; how it hinders; what we should expect from the tech giants… and what we can do.
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