Past Events

Ian Alexander is an independent consultant, trainer and author specialising in Requirements Engineering, often using DOORS / DXL as the platform.

He is the lead author of Writing Better Requirements (Addison-Wesley, 2002), Scenarios, Stories, Use Cases (Wiley, 2004), and Discovering Requirements (Wiley, 2009) .

He is the chairman of the BCS Requirements Engineering Specialist Group. He is a Chartered Engineer.

In this evening mini-tutorial, Ian Alexander will answer the question Why Requirements?, and will show with short group exercises on Goals and Scenarios how to get started on discovering and structuring the requirements for systems and software.

Ian will be available after the tutorial to sign copies of his latest book Discovering Requirements, at a healthy Amazon discount.

Digital logic and the Turing machine are the bases of the computer revolution which began in the mid-twentieth century and is still very much in progress. We have produced ever more powerful hardware and software to do syntactical processing operating within fixed rules and fixed environments. We don’t appear, however, to be close to providing a machine which has the power to 'think' beyond these limitations. Nor does the human brain appear to operate like a Turing machine. Is there a logic, a grammar, that can be applied to something like the human brain? My argument will be that there is, and that it is not a digital logic, which is a particular outcome of a more fundamental logic, but one to which uncertainty is intrinsic.

From evidence from systems organised at many different scales, it will be proposed that a logical structure can be developed which encompasses the general class of self-organising systems, and which is based on a universal rewrite system and the principle of nilpotency or squaring to zero, in which the system and environment have (in mathematical terms) a space-time variation, defined by the phase, which preserves a dualistic mirror-image relationship. Ways of achieving this relationship in physical terms include quantum holography and the holographic principle. Thermodynamically, it seems to connect with systems organised as quantum Carnot engines.

The programme of the Cybernetics Machine Group of the British Computer Society is to develop the theory and applications relating to this process. The principal investigators are Peter Rowlands, Peter Marcer, Bernard Diaz, Vanessa Hill, and Walter Schempp, a unique combination of experts in physics, computer science, biology and mathematics. A physical realisation appears to be already available in the form of magnetic resonance imaging, where the systematic theorising of Walter Schempp is leading to advanced practical results.

Dr Peter Rowlands MInstP, MBCS

Dr Peter Rowlands is a Research Fellow in the Department of Physics at the University of Liverpool. He has worked for ICI Mond and as a Lecturer and Head of Department Pendleton College, Manchester. He has published many papers and books. His recent book Zero to Infinity (World Scientific, 2007) inspired a newly-founded IT Company in Silicon Valley to name themselves Zinfi Technologies. Current research in the fundamental issues of the foundations of physics, and developments leading from them.

Oil company operations are moving into more inhospitable and remote locations. In turn this has placed greater dependence on reliable process control and oil field automation technology.

By way of example the talk will investigate the industry’s current control priorities and the challenges we now face to maximize production and extend oil field life.

It will be emphasized that, in many respects, upstream remains ‘virgin’ territory for the exploitation of modern control techniques and there remains significant potential for academia to help address some specific control issues.

Now under three years away, plans for the London games are well advanced – including the protection of the athletes, officials, spectators and the reputation of the Olympics themselves from cybercrime.

This presentation will look at the history of the Olympic Games in the modern era and identify the vulnerabilities which exist to a variety of problems from accidents to deliberate forms of sabotage; focusing on the use of computer crime in particular. It will also consider the susceptibility of the event to unforeseen accidents and complications which are the normal consequences of computer applications on this scale. The presentation will conclude with a risk assessment which looks in particular at the cybercrime dangers of the Olympic Games particularly for the individual.

Denis Edgar-Nevill FBCS, CITP

Denis is Head of Department, Department of Computing at Canterbury Christ Church Computing. He has been teaching and researching in the area of Cybercrime since developing one of the first MSc courses in the UK in this area jointly validated with (what is now) the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA). He is also chair of the CFET (Cybercrime Forensics Education and Training) annual international conferences held since 2007. In 2008 he proposed to the BCS the formation of the BCS Cybercrime Forensics SG and was elected founding chair in December 2008 (re-elected chair at the AGM in September 2009). He has in excess of 150 publications in the areas of computer forensics, cybercrime, software quality, computing education and a range of other computing fields. He is an active member of the BCS having served on a number of different branch committees and the CEng committee in Scotland.

Business Change appears in different guises and forms. The significance of business change is gaining recognition by all. One may argue that all projects in business and non-business projects are change projects. Many persons are working on business change without consciously mindful of it.

The BCS launched a new Business Change Specialist Group in September 2009. The Business Change SG will seek to act as a hub within BCS for discussion and research about the wide range of business change concerns, and will actively promote the role that business change has to play in the advancement and development of the IT profession within the UK and the realisation of benefits from IT-enabled business improvement.

Kevin Johns, the chair of the Specialist Group is coming to share the with us the Business Change context and the work the SG. This meeting aims to seed the growing of a local community in the Business Change.

The eleventh annual prestige seminar organised by the East of England Engineering Science & Technology Association (Herts and Beds Group) with support from many Professional Engineering Institutions and others will take place on the evening of Wednesday 11th November 2009. This free event is hosted by the University of Hertfordshire and will commence with refreshments and networking in an informal environment.

Waste and Recycling are words that we are encouraged to regard as synonymous. With legislation and financial pressure ways must be pursued to reduce the waste going to landfill. The seminar aims to point the way that engineering can achieve this end. Under the Chairmanship of Dr Alan Whitehead MP the three speakers will examine the problem and review the options at all stages of the process of creating, handling and disposing of waste.

An essential element of the prestige seminar is the final chaired discussion when the audience can put forward their views and questions to the speakers and debate some of the decisions ahead.

Many organisations today use IT to meet a specific need and do not always view it as a tool that can be developed ‘organically’ to best serve the interests of the business. For organizations who have implemented a complex IT system; the results on the usage post implementation can be variable. This scale of usage can range from users fully embracing the tool to those that use it sparingly and only when absolutely necessary.

Once the IT system has bedded down however, there are very few organisations that use the current landscape as a basis to further innovate processes, products or services. Most organizations are clearly keen on developing an IT capability; however there is little or no concession for leveraging IT for innovation.

The result of this is that many organizations are not gaining the full benefit of the initial IT investment and there is no view of attaining incremental gains. The culture within many organizations is one of solving IT related business issues or implementing new ideas when the current IT application is de-commissioned.

Cranfield University is starting a new project to research into the current innovative practices to gain additional value from using IT in organisations. At a time when budgets are being squeezed harder, organisations are looking to make their IT spend go further. Innovative ideas and practices are increasingly being sought to further leverage the organisational resources.

The evening will give you the opportunity to learn and share good innovative practices using technology, network and join a community interested in innovative practices which leverage technology.

Branch Events

BCS depends on its Branches and Specialist Groups to raise awareness of IT issues, and to provide tangible benefits to members.

Over the last year, Bedford Branch events have covered a variety of topics, including Scenario Planning and High Performance Computing, the latter including a 3D Space Shuttle trip to the International Space Station, by courtesy of the Cranfield University Virtual Reality Suite.

In addition, we are working with the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park to match BCS members' collective memories of computing history to the hardware they have on display, and are planning a major joint event later in the year.

Committee

We have an enthusiastic Committee, but increasing pressure of work, and an impending overseas posting, makes it difficult for members to devote time to planning and organising events. So here is your opportunity to contribute to BCS and the IT Profession, while having the opportunity to work with the universities, schools and IT-related organisations in our area and beyond.

If you are interested, please get in touch. Our AGM is at Cranfield University next Tuesday, so come along if you can. Otherwise, please contact me, our Secretary, Dr Ip-Shing Fan, or any committee member.

AGENDA

1. Apologies for Absence
2. Minutes of the 2008 Annual General Meeting
3. Chair's Report
4. Treasurer's Report
5. Other Officers Reports
6. Election of Committee
7. Any Other Business

Copies of the last AGM Minutes and Officers' reports will be available at the AGM. To facilitate members that are unable to attend, the committee shall, on request, be pleased to forward copies of these documents.

Your Branch committee needs your support to continue in its work for all members. We urgently need new committee members to help us run our events as in previous years. We would be grateful for all nominations to join the committee using the forms included.

The previous year's committee can be found here.

All positions will be voted on, and are expected to be filled at this AGM from nominations received.

We would be grateful if you could make every effort to attend this important event in our calendar.

The exact location is CSA Lounge, Building 114 in the Cranfield campus. Directions and maps can be found here. Delegates can park on the technical site without prior arrangement.

• The difficulty in resolving recurring performance & stability problems
• How grey problems challenge current IT support organisations
• Why typical approaches and methods are unreliable in this area
• How and why RPR is 99.96% successful
• Two finance industry case studies