Term 3 Week 11 Meeting Minutes

Posted on 5th July 2022

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