AGM June 2018 Chairman’s report
Good morning, Ladies and Gentlemen, and welcome to the AGM June 2018.
In accordance with Article 14 of our Constitution, you have been invited to attend today’s Annual General Meeting for 2018. It is a pleasure to see many familiar faces again, a cartographic family reunion of sorts, you might say. I would like to welcome you all on behalf of our Executive Committee; it is nice to have you here to report on the IMCOS proceedings for 2017. A special welcome today to the delegation of PHIMCOS/Manila, most of them members of IMCOS as well. The Executive Committee much appreciates your attendance, which provides feed-back from our members albeit on a limited scale. Wulf Bodenstein, Ian Harvey and Jenny Harvey have sent their apologies The Harvey’s are preparing the IMCOS stand on the London Map Fair below, a stand provided at no charge, by the organisers of the Fair, who also made this room available for our AGM. Please allow me to provide some ‘domestic’ information before I start on the AGM Agenda: You have a choice of action, once our AGM is completed in full. Regulations of the LMF require that we either vacate the building by – say – 1130 hrs and re-enter through the regular entrance at 12 noon when the Map Fair is open to the general public, or remain cooped up in this room until 12 noon and enter the map fair from here.
Chairman’s report
I have, like most other years, prepared a statement as chairman’s report in order to ensure that the information provided on our website will be the same as delivered here during the official meeting. The Executive Committee has attended our usual four face-to-face meetings in London; 3 dedicated meetings and 1 in combination with the annual map evening in September. The agenda items have become kind of standard over the years, but some unexpected or non-standard problems tend to pop-up for action as well. E-mail exchanges between Committee members have occurred frequently of course as being the quickest reliable way of communication, complemented with telephone conversations where indispensable. Every once in a while, Spam messages are received, but so far we have been able to avoid falling into these traps, mostly concerning fake bills, addressed to our Honorary Treasurer, Jeremy
Our IMCOS website now has more features than before and seems stable in its operation. We have recently added a feature allowing direct registration and payment for IMCOS events that are organised by our Society; formally this ought to come in the 2018 Annual Report, however. Peter Walker and Ljiljana Ortolya-Baird carried most of the load. The Executive Committee is almost complete with Katie Parker and Mike Sweeting joining in 2017 and up for AGM approval today for you to make it official. The chairman is happy to report that the Committee’s members are all knowledgeable, effective and very nice to work with. The Executive Committee is now almost complete again, only lacking an Officer for International Matters. This position has been filled at interim for some years now by the chairman.
The IMCOS Journals have been prepared, as usual, by our editor Ljiljana; the Journal’s standard of quality is much appreciated and as such remains a respected link with our membership, in the U.K. or abroad.
We feel that the regular June weekend in 2017 was as successful as ever and hope the membership has arrived at the same judgement. The 2017 Malcolm Young lecture was delivered by John Moore, retired Collection Manager of the University of Glasgow Library and well-known for researching the history of Scottish cartography, a topic that went down well with the audience
In March 2017, an IMCOS local event was organised by Valerie; a visit to Manchester, duly reported in the Journal, and one that your chairman regrets to have missed because of earlier obligations.
The Helen Wallis Award 2017 was presented to Vladimiro Valerio from Venice; he was present in person at last year’s Annual Dinner to accept the Award. Since Tony Campbell has stepped down from the Award Committee, we have taken a closer look at the procedure and changed the rules only marginally in the end. The new rules will become effective on 1 July this year and our President Peter Barber has agreed to chair the Award Committee together with Valerie Newby-Scott and a third member to ensure input from outside IMCOS.
The AGM 2017 and the London Map Fair thereafter took place in this building of the Royal Geographical Society again, just like today. In the international field, IMCOS has had the Hamburg Symposium, ably organised by the Dr. Farhad Vladi and his team, for which we are grateful. It is ever more difficult to find organisers, causing 2019 to be a year without an IMCOS Symposium; the Committee recommends attending the bi-annual ICHC Conference which is taking place in Amsterdam in July 2019. We expect to provide a direct link to the ICHC website in due course
In terms of our financial situation, I feel we may be content under the circumstances. The membership is slightly higher than in the preceding year, due to Peter Walker’s efforts, both in chasing our members when they forgot to renew and in keeping in touch when members having problems joining or renewing their subscription.
IMCOS has continued its support of the Warburg Lectures as in previous years. Hardly any interest accrues on the IMCOS funds nowadays as you all will be aware, but our financial situation is stable nevertheless. More information under Agenda item 4 from our Honorary Treasurer, Jeremy Edwards.
Ladies and Gentlemen, this concludes the Chairman’s report for 2017. The sheets on the screen were put up by our General Secretary, David Dare, who also prepared the AGM minutes. Comments or questions are welcome of course; questions of a specific nature are maybe better addressed to the IMCOS Officers, when their specific field comes up on the agenda.
HK, Lisse, 29 May 2018
