Dr Braunold is the national clinical lead for Summary Care Record and is an excellent, enthusiastic speaker as well as being an ongoing part-time practising GP. She gave a talk to the ASSIST NW Branch which was very well received.

The Summary Care Record (SCR) is entering national rollout and is a “hot topic” at the moment.  Dr Braunold will be talking about the progress of SCR and the plans for upload and utilisation of the records, some of the challenges and some of the efficiencies Connecting for Health expect for the service as a result of access.

Our thanks to the committee of Health Northern SG for arranging this evening’s speaker and their help with the event in general.

Please email us (wybranchbcs@googlemail.com) if you are coming to the meeting so we can arrange sufficient seating and refreshments.

Download this summary as a Microsoft Word document.

Download directions to the venue as a Adobe PDF document.

The BCS currently sponsors three prizes for students graduating from Innovation North – Faculty of Information & Technology. this years winners are:

British Computer Society Prize – £50

For the most professional individual Computing project incorporating ethical issues Stephen Edward Griffin – BSc (Hons) Business Computing – Internet Systems

British Computer Society Prize – £50

For the most professional individual Management project incorporating ethical issues Neal Michael Ricketts – BSc (Hons) Business Information Systems

British Computer Society Prize – £50 plus 1 year’s membership of the BCS

For outstanding achievement in Computing / IT Karolina Sajak – BSc (Hons) Computing – Artificial Intelligence

The West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire branches of the BCS have arranged a trip to Bletchley Park, the National Codes Centre on Saturday 20th March, 2010.

Most of you will be familiar with the general history of Bletchley Park – BP to its aficionados  It is now the National Codes Centre, in honour of the work during Word War II in breaking the German and Japanese military communications.

The costs cover the coach, tour fee, lunch and other refreshments at BP and are as follows:

• Leeds departure – Member – £32.50
• Leeds departure – Non-Member – £36.50
• Sheffield departure – Member – £31.50
• Sheffield departure – Non-Member – £35.50

(including VAT)

The plan is:

• Coach pickup at 07:30 from outside West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds (near LS2 7UP.  See Leeds map for public car parks nearby.  The cheapest private car park is the long stay railway station car park off Aire Street (LS1 4HT); there are also some NCP car parks nearer to the Playhouse.)
• Coach pickup about 08:15 from Weedon St, Sheffield, S9 2 (entrance to Meadowhall overflow car park – see map and directions)
• Arrive Bletchley Park about 11a.m. – Tea coffee and biscuits
• Introductory talk, followed by the first half of the tour around the outside of the wartime buildings in the grounds of Bletchley Park, where visitors are given a detailed history of the site and its code breaking activities.
• Lunch about 12:15 – Sandwich buffet; mixed leaf salad and crisps with dips.  Tea, coffee or soft drink.  (Please state special dietary requirements when booking.)
• The second half of the tour includes a visit to Block B museum which tells the complete Bletchley Park story.  It houses the Abwehr Enigma machine, Lorenz machine and Bombe Rebuild.  The tour also includes a visit to the Colossus Rebuild.
• Tea, coffee and mini chocolate brownies or mini muffins before departure (about 3:30p.m.).

Please be at your pickup point in plenty of time.  A contact number for the day would be useful so that we can ring you should there be a problem.

Wheelchair users: The coach can take folding wheelchairs in its boot but there are about 3 steps up into the coach itself.  Bletchley Park can provide wheelchairs if needed.  If you will be taking a wheelchair or you need one providing please state this in the “Special Instructions” box when booking.

Booking is via the BCS online booking system:  www.bcs.org/events/registration/

Closing Date for bookings is midnight of Monday 8^th March 2010

Downloads

Download a poster for your office:

• Bletchley Park Visit Poster in Microsoft Word format
• Bletchley Park Visit Poster in Open Office Open Document Text format
• Bletchley Park Visit Poster in Adobe PDF format

Directions to the pick points:

• Leeds parking
• Sheffield pickup point

The volume of malware has accelerated, rapidly driven by a change in motive amongst writers from malicious intent to commercial intent evolving from “occasional” exploits to a thriving global economy. With the increasing scale and sophistication of attacks ensuring you or your users are protected is an increasing challenge demanding a  “collaborative” approach to beat the cyber criminals, protecting consumers and businesses.

Modern malware attacks aren’t confided to the dark areas of the internet anymore as you can get infected by simply visiting a perfectly legitimate website that you visit on a daily basis.. Jacques will use a real life example of how such an attack takes place and what is needed to do it. He will also give you an insight into the tools cyber criminals are using to compromise their victims. This will be a straight talking and deep dive into what is happening on a day to day basis, including topics such as:

• a look into what is happening within the computer underground
• showing off new technologies used by hackers to compromise their victims
• talking about a real life case study of how hackers compromise websites to serve malware
• new methods used by hackers to compromise mobile users
• key points that you need to be aware of about modern day malware

Jacques Erasmus (Director of Malware Research at Prevx) researches emergent types of malware to ensure users are fully protected from these new forms of cyber-threat.   Jacques has recently featured on the BBC 6 o’clock news, BBC Click, BBC Breakfast, ITV News and is often approached by international media for his opinion on emerging Internet threats.

Jacques has also been instrumental in the development and growth of the Prevx product (with over over 5 million users worldwide), as well as helping to launch a number of consumer-facing security products which are now protecting millions of people across the world.  Jacques has been central to helping champion a behaviour-based approach to security software which addresses the faults inherent with the signature-based methods used by many existing major anti-virus vendors.

‘Black Box’ working is where you have no knowledge of the internal workings of a system. However, how many defects remain undetected due to this problem? This talk looks at the ‘Black Box’ view of software developments, and uses worked examples to show the things that may be missed unless testers are used who appreciate the underlying complexities of IT. Various ‘Black Box’ problems are examined such as:

• Lack of control over testing
• Hidden / unknown functionality
• Manual processes
• Compensating errors
• Incorrect tests and incorrect assumptions

The talk also introduces Quality Driven Development (QDD), a technique which can resolve the Agile / Waterfall debate. QDD establishes a point where a stable release of code is arrived at, and only sets the ‘clock ticking’ on testing time from that point onwards. This is an evolutionary/iterative ‘prototyping’ phase that precedes the formal test stage. Any testing time up to the stable point being reached is called ‘Development by Test’ Time (DBT). DBT is charged to the project as Development time, not testing time i.e. it is not allowed to reduce the amount of ‘real test’ time. DBT also provides transparency to project sponsors of the quality of the development.

Tim Hunter, our speaker, is an IT consultant for Yorview (www.yorview.co.uk). He has over 28 years experience of IT development and testing, gained in major companies throughout the UK and Europe. His wide ranging experience includes Project Delivery and System Testing gained in various Financial Services Sectors including Retail Credit, Banking, Insurance and Telecommunications.

After 10 years of running his own IT consultancy, Tim has launched his own Quality Driven Development methodology which he hopes will resolve the Agile / Waterfall debate. He has written articles for Computer Weekly and IT Now. Tim also runs one of the most commented on blogs on the BCS website: The ‘IT Quality’ Blog: (http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConBlog.21).

Tim is an experienced speaker, and has delivered speeches at the Software Quality Management Conference (Southampton, UK) and the BCS Software Testing Specialist Group Conference (London UK) in 2009.

Downloads

Opening the black box: WYBCS August presentation (PDF, 1.19MB)

The slides from Tim’s presentation.

The BCS Enterprise Architecture SG is holding an event in Manchester on July 17th.

The presentation will cover Enterprise Architecture tool evolution, key tool capabilities, and market overview.

Mark Blowers, Enterprise Architectures Practice Director for Butler Group, will give the presentation in the John Dalton Building of the Manchester Metropolitan University.

Further details about the event, including how to book are on the BCS Enterprise Architecture SG website.

Download the nomination form for the WYBCS committee: WYO 2008-9 Notification Letter (DOC, 35.5KB)

The West Yorkshire branch of the BCS would like to apologise for any problems members may have encountered when receiving the latest email sent via our list server “Are you itching to use your IT skills to help others”.

Some members have reported receiving the email multiple times and there have been other errors reported as well. Rest assured that we’re currently investigating this problem.

Sponsored by Leeds NTI & Yorkshire Water IT

We are proud to announce the first SkillCentre to be held “up North” has been made free to BCS members thanks to YPG HQ! The event is also open to non-members so please bring your colleagues – it’s only 5.00 for non-members.

Influencing people, including yourself, will help you further develop your:

Interpersonal skills … and ability to engage with other people at all levels …. in differing situations in pursuit of achieving mutually beneficial outcomes …. confidently and authoritatively … whilst gaining
respect and trust from others.

Full details can be found here:
http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.25421

Date:Tuesday 28th April 2009
Venue: Leeds Old Broadcasting House, 148 Woodhouse Lane, Leeds, LS2 9EN
Cost: BCS Members Free, Non-Members only 5.00

Timings:
18.30 – Doors open, light refreshments provided
19.00 – Session starts
The session should take around 1 hours and there will be a 10 minute break in the middle.

Speaker: Nigel Moody

Nigel is a highly experienced professional business and management consultant who is really keen to make this event your event. If you have any specific needs relating to influencing skills please specify on the booking form in the “Special Requirements” field. For example you may wish
to be more influential in meetings or in contract negotiations.

You must book to attend this event via this link:
http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.25421

The President of the BCS, Alan Pollard, has taken “The BCS in the Community” as his theme for the year and is encouraging volunteering. Here is an opportunity for one of more of our members to volunteer to help a charity, The Yorkshire Archaeological Society (YAS).

The YAS is a membership based charity, which runs a library and archive in Leeds and a variety of meetings, day conferences and other events across Yorkshire. Despite the name, YAS covers family history and regional and local history, as well as archaeology. (http://www.yas.org.uk/content/about.html)

Paul Brayford, a BCS member, who is a trustee of YAS has said:

“We are seeking a volunteer(s) to help us develop a new membership database system. Our existing system was developed in the early 1990s using a database product called SR-Info which is an MSDOS based product. We’d like to build a new system that can meet our needs for the next few years.

We need someone or a team with skills in:

• Business analysis
• System analysis and design
• MS Access application build
• Data migration

I wonder, given Alan Pollard’s theme for this year, whether there is a Leeds based member or members of the BCS West Yorkshire branch who would be willing to assist us?”

Please see http://www.westyorkshire.bcs.org/2009/04/are-you-itching-to-use-your-it-skills-to-help-others-then-look-no-further/ for more details or contact Paul at paul.brayford@bcs.org.uk or on 07735 559035 or 0844 798 6259.

Details of this project can be dowloaded in this document (Microsoft Word, 28.2KB): YAS Request.