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.

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

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

Jim also has a very interesting and diverse computer collection from Crays and other supercomputers to the BBC micro and other microcomputers.  The collection contains some real gems.  See http://www.computermuseum.org.uk/ for details.  These computers are the topic for this evening’s talk and Professor Austin will bring some examples of old computers with him.

The event will be in rooms 1F024 and 1F025 which are on the first floor.  Disabled access is available and there is car parking on the site.  Please sign in at reception when you arrive.  Thank you to Richard Hind, Tutor of IT and Computing at York College, for organising this event.

See www.yorkcollege.ac.uk/maps-and-directions/ for information on how to get to the college and floor plans.

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

For those requiring something more substantial than tea or coffee and biscuits, the College has a canteen, open until 6pm, serving hot food and sandwiches.

As open-source software has grown in sophistication, it has quickly become a viable alternative to the major proprietary operating systems. This presentation will give an update on the current capabilities of open source along with an insight into future developments. Matthew will discuss the issues and myths around its use in commercial and public-sector organisations, whilst also providing pointers for personal use.

The talk will include:

• Overview of Ubuntu?
• Usage in the contexts of: Commercial-enterprise, Public Sector, Personal
• Open Source Applications
• Open Source Capabilities
• The road map

Matthew Barker joined Canonical in 2006, taking responsibility for the OEM channel in South Asia. Having successfully built partnerships with hardware manufacturers like HCL, Wipro and eSys, he moved into the Canonical Corporate Services Team in 2008 focussing on driving the adoption of Ubuntu in enterprise. He has overseen deployments with organisations like the NHS, York University and Handelsbanken. He has experience across all the significant vertical markets and of “the how and why” open source is being adopted.

Founded in late 2004, Canonical is the commercial sponsor of the Ubuntu project with the  mission to help individuals and organisations take full advantage of open-source technologies by:

• Delivering the world’s best free-software platform
• Ensuring its availability to everyone
• Supporting it with high-quality professional service offerings
• Encouraging the continued growth and development of the free-software community

Canonical believes the open-source community creates better software. The community enables an increase development capacity many times over. Ubuntu is a community-developed and supported project. Since its launch in October 2004, Ubuntu has become one of the most highly regarded Linux distributions with millions of users around the world. Every six months the world’s best free and open-source software is selected, tested, brought together, and made freely available on common technology platforms.

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.

• 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.

Leading local specialist IT recruiters have agreed to work together for the first time and deliver a formal presentation based on their combined industry experiences.

• How to write a winning CV for both permanent and contract roles
• Guidance for employers when creating a job specification
• Tailoring a CV to fit the role described within the job specification
• CV Howlers
• Open Q&A session with a panel of IT recruiters

Panellists will be available after the event for one to one meeting, answering questions which were not suitable for the open Q&A session.

This event has limited capacity so please email (wybranchbcs@googlemail.com) quickly to reserve your place and avoid disappointment.

The committee would like to thank nti (www.ntileeds.co.uk) for sponsoring this event and making it possible.

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.

In addition, Mr. Mills will also explore the importance of Standards based web development in terms of accessibility and cross device rendering, particularly important given the ballooning use of mobile devices to access the Internet

Opera believes the Web is a force for good. As an industry leader in providing innovative and standards-compliant Web browsing, Opera Software seeks to work with the next generation of leaders and thinkers whose ideas will decide the future of the Web.

This presentation will explore:

• the history and future of the Web
• the browser industry
• open Web standards
• Web applications
• the role of the Web and mobile browsing, particularly in developing countries

This briefing can also be downloaded in Microsoft Word and Adobe PDF formats:

• Joint Event with YPG June Meeting 2009 (PDF) (15.6KB)
  
• Joint Event with YPG June Meeting 2009 (DOC) (19KB)