SSAISB AGM 2006: Minutes

                     Minutes for AISB AGM 2006
                     =========================
Location: University of Bristol

Committee members present: John Barnden (Chair), Patrick Olivier
(Treasurer), Louise Dennis (Secretary), Colin Johnson (Editor AISBQ),
Simon Colton (Public Understanding), Dimitar Kazakov, Geraint Wiggins.

1. Welcome

2. Apologies from Committee members for absence

   Apologies were received from Gary Jones (Membership), David Bree
(Publicity), Natalio Krasnogor (Publications) and Fiona McNeill.

3. Minutes of last AGM

   These were accepted.

4. Requests for Changes to the Agenda.

   There were none.

5. Chair's report.

John Barnden (Chair) welcomed everyone to the meeting.  

He thanked Tim Kovacs, James Marshall and their team for organising
AISB'06 and the symposia organisers, speakers, delegates and the
University of Bristol for making it such a successful convention.  The
convention was sponsored by EPSRC and Hewlett-Packard and had
approximately 212 delegates of which 48 were international. 

John followed up on a couple of issues that had been referred to the
committee by the previous AGM.  

Firstly, there had been a suggestion that the convention registration
should be used as an incentive to join the society.  This had always
been the practice but this year the price differential for members and
non-members had been increased in order to make it more advantageous
to members.

Secondly, the logo for the society had been changed. 

AISB 2007 would be in Newcastle.  The proposal had been made by Peter
Andras but the organisation had now been taken over by Patrick
Olivier and Christian Kray.  The theme would be Ambient and Artificial Intelligence.

The call for proposals for AISB 2008 had been issued.

There had been several changes in the committee.  Kerstin Dautenhahn
(AISB 2005) was leaving the committee and would be replaced by
Christian Kray (AISB 2007).  Sunny Bains had resigned from editor of
the Quarterly and the committee she had been replaced by Colin
Johnson, however her company, Form and Content Media, would continue
to handle much of the administration and production work.  Two
general committee positions had also been advertised but no
nominations had been received at the time.  Two late nominations had
now been received and the committee was minded to accept them but had
not yet had an opportunity to make a decision.

A nomination form for new fellows had also gone out with the last
quarterly with a deadline of the 1st May.

The finances were currently in a good state and the committee intended
to spend some of the capital that had been amassed.  John invited
society members to suggest worthwhile project on which money could be
spent.

John had made contact with EPSRC in the past year and acquired some
statistics about funding for Artificial Intelligence.  In general AI
appeared to be doing well receiving about a third of the relevant
money and coming second in terms of proposals.  John welcomed
interested people to look at the figures and said they might go up on
the website.  The committee were also considering sending a delegation
to visit EPSRC in Swindon.

John reported from the committee meeting the previous evening which
had experimented with a new format in which the AISB fellows were
invited and the discussion limited to high-level strategic issues.
The idea of events to tie in with the Olympics in 2012 had been
raised.  The objective would be to generate research and raise public
understanding.  Suggestions (some from the floor) included
applications of AI to sport, AI based competitions, activities for
children (linked to the Kids' Olympics), links to the para-Olympics,
AI in computer games, a special loebner event areas where research
could be focused included wearable computers, emulators, computer
vision, automatic summarising, transport, security and navigation (the
"digital Olympics"), ubiquitous computing.  The next step was to
contact the EPSRC, ESRC, government offices.  Members were encouraged
supply contacts and suggestions and a separate group would be formed
to push the idea forward.  John suggested that the AISB's role would
be as a think tank and lobbying organisation although it might also
hold an EPSRC Ideas Factory.

John reported that within the wider discipline of Computer Science
there were moves to establish a new learned society - the Institute of
Computing which would replace th CPHC and UKCRC.  This would be
related to the BCS.  The AISB should have a positive role in this and
would not be swallowed however the society was not a strong lobbying
body and should benefit from links with the IOC in this respect.

John Barnden then handed over to Simon Colton (Public Understanding).
Simon reported that the AISB had run a public understanding event at
IJCAI in 2005 co-organised with the SGAI via Andrew Tuson and Rob
Milne.  This had sold out with approximately 2/3 of the tickets going
to the general public and the rest to IJCAI delegates.  160 tickets
were sold in all about about 3/4 of the holders turned up.  The event
involved two speakers, Aaron Sloman (representing philosophical
issues) and Wolfgang Wahlster (representing applications) it was
followed by a healthy discussion chaired by Alan Bundy.

The society had nominally been given the go ahead for a Computer Art
event in London (ie. Computer Generated Art) and people should contact
Simon if they were interested.

John Barnden thanked Simon Colton.

6. Membership numbers
John Barnden (Chair) presented the membership numbers on behalf of
Gary Jones (Membership).

There were roughly 620 members around 400 of which were ordinary
members and 160 were students.  The rest were complimentary or
institutional members.  Although the membership numbers overall had
risen the income from membership had reduced.  This was accounted for
by the fact that ordinary members were declining with student
memberships no the rise.  The membership had an international flavour
with roughly a quarter of all members international.  The society was
currently concentrating on increasing institutional and corporate
members.

7. Treasurer's report

Patrick Olivier (Treasurer) passed around a summary sheet of the
society's finances.  This showed 32,576 UKP at the bank.  Income from
memberships had been 14,331 in 2005 and was predicted to be 14,000 in
2006.  AISB 2005 had turned a 9,000 UKP profit but this was
exceptional and 3,000 had been budgeted for AISB 2006.  The budget for
2006 showed a total income of 17,750 and total expenditure of 19,400
which would leave 30,926 UKP in the bank at the end of the year.

Patrick re-iterated the committee's decision to spend some of the
capital.  He noted that there was a rule of thumb to keep either one
year's turnover or the turnover for two conventions in the bank.
Either way this gave the society about 12,000 UKP.  Suggestions
(including from the floor) included underwriting events, developing a
schools' outreach programme, improving the AISBJ, and increasing the
number and/or value of student travel awards.

8. AOB

None

Meeting closed at 2.20pm