Kerry Wear's blog

Get Inspired Goes Virtual - Supported by BCS Berkshire Branch

On July 7th EBP South held their virtual “Inspiring STEM Careers” event for secondary school students aged 11-16. This is an annual event designed to engage, educate and inspire students into STEM Careers. Throughout the day students were able to explore careers in STEM through activities designed and led by business volunteers. 

R. U. Hacking? - University of Reading Student Chapter

On the 26th-27th June 2021, The University of Reading’s, Student-led Tech Society, R. U. Hacking? Hosted their Annual event. The R. U. Hacking 2021 Hackathon. Due to the complications caused by the Coronavirus global pandemic, an event which usually would thrive in a physical environment, was compelled to be moved into a virtual setting if it was to take place this year. 

Membership update – digital welcome packs

Our Membership team continually strives to make improvements for our members by listening to feedback in surveys and comments on social media. In the annual member survey, we asked about the current membership card and the possibilities of a digital pack. The results for the removal of plastic cards, naturally, were overwhelming.

But just producing a non-plastic card wasn’t the solution. We also wanted:

BCS IT Team Supports the Turing Trust

The BCS IT department has been sending old, unwanted and wiped devices to the Turing Trust. The family of Alan Turing founded the Trust to support education in the UK and sub-Saharan Africa.

Over the last year, supported by our donations, they have achieved an incredible amount with 211 schools and organisations.

Below is a picture from Sunshine Primary School in Malawi, one of the schools which received a donation from us:

Turing Trust Group

Digital Learning for Work campaign

At BCS we don’t just talk the talk, we walk the walk...
 

The digital divide is high on the agenda at BCS and across the nation. That's why the UK Government has put in place free digital skills qualifications for all adults, to make sure whatever job people do they have basic digital literacy for the workplace.

BCS is a big voice on this agenda, and we have qualifications which have been approved to receive funding:

Two events, four days, inspiration aplenty

Two events, four days, inspiration aplenty

At the end of March/beginning of April we held a couple of student focused events. In total we had 350 students attend 2 events across 4 days. Let me fill you in…

BCS Lovelace Colloquium, March 30 2021:
This year’s Lovelace Colloquium took place on March 30th (virtually) via GatherTown, YouTube and Discord. We had 100 abstracts submitted and 163 general signups which was well over and above the attendance levels of the face-to-face Colloquiums.

Member Groups Review - including ‘Local Hubs’.

Having attended the last three conventions, I am very pleased that we are now firmly moving into this call to action phase.

Our “member groups review” working group is seeking proactive individuals that want to work together to suggest positive improvements in how member groups operate - creation, governance (rules), relevance, collaboration (within BCS and externally), innovation, onboarding new members, mentoring and promotion of good practice.

Communications Review

At the members’ convention earlier this year, a theme came out of BCS feedback relating to improvements in communications.  This included communications through the public website, as well as in mechanisms for communication between members within and across member groups.

BCS Hellenic Section Distinguished IT Graduates Awards

On 17/9/2020 the first Distinguished IT Graduates Awards was held by the BCS Hellenic Section, for graduates of Universities, who achieved a first in their graduate and postgraduate studies in Computer Science.

The award ceremony took place at the British Ambassador Residence.

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