Dr Iain R. White of ISYS Software for the Outdoors

What does it take to be a finalist at the BCS IT Professional Awards?

ISYS Software for the Outdoors achieved this accolade this year. Here in Glasgow, we have already seen ISYS' Hillwalker software, now we can see the successor: MapWise.

MapWise contains the Ordnance Survey maps of Britain (and the Isle of Man) on just 4 CDs (Scotland is on a single CD). Also on the CD are a route planning program, a Data Elevation Model and an interface to Excel and GPS (Global Positioning System) Utility.

MapWise integrates with Hillwalker, allowing hill routes to be plotted on OS maps.

The Data Elevation Model is a three dimensional model of the British Isles which allows the height climbed, and hence the time taken, to be calculated using Naismith's Rule.

The GPS Utility allows a route card to be sent to a GPS and the resulting track retrieved from the GPS and plotted on the map.

The talk will show these images and, also, explore the techniques used to circumvent the size and speed restrictions of even modern PCs. During coffee, a full musical slide show from the programs will be shown.

IBM Global Services integrates a broad range of services and consulting capabilities to help business realize the full value of information technology. Today IBM Greenock is responsible for the fulfilment and support of IBM ThinkPads (mobile computers) and eServers (which run many applications simultaneously and enable companies to link to the Web) for Europe, Middle East and Africa.

In customer facing roles, IBM have over 1500 staff in five centres who deal with over 16 million calls per year. Supporting all of these activities are a number of critical operations such as Distribution, Technical Support, Human Resources, Finance and Procurement - all of which operate in an e-business environment. There are over 3,000 people currently working on the Greenock campus.

This visit will offer three presentations covering IBM Global Services, the IBM Scottish Service Centre and IBM Thinkvantage technologies plus visits to the Server Assembly area and the Helpcentre

Please note that you must be registered for this visit as places are strictly limited. If you would like to come along, please e-mail Laurie Borthwick with your name and company/organisation name (if relevant). There is no transport provided and visitors will have to make their own arrangements for getting to and from IBM Greenock.

Dr Stephen Brewster of Glasgow University's Multimodal Interaction Group treated us to a fascinating presentation on multimodal means of interacting with modern computing devices. Areas covered included: auditory messages known as earcons, three-dimensional sound and input by gesturing.

It is hoped that we can make a visit to the HCI labs next year for a hands-on experience.

A traditional dinner followed by an evening of music and dance, the BCS Glasgow Grand Dinner Ceilidh is the highlight of our social calendar.

The Holiday Inn proved to be a very successful venue for the March 2003 event and we enjoyed an even more successful event there this year. The setting was warm and welcoming - one particularly nice touch was the appearance of BCS blue candles in silver candlebra on each table.

We were privileged to have Norman MacKinnon to sing for us and, with Stephen Vallis who came straight from his pibroch competition to play his bagpipes, Gary Blair who played the accordian tirelessly for our dancing and our little jewels of the Ceilidh: Elizabeth Jollie's young dancers, the entertainment was superb!

For those who would like to revisit, or have a taster of, our Ceilidh entertainment, Norman MacKinnon has launched his website this week.  Do visit NormanMacKinnon.com !

Scottish Developers held a special seminar for the Glasgow Branch and over the course of 60 minutes, Craig Murphy discussed XML & Web Services. Craig explained how to build 'raw' XML-based web services using XML and HTTP. He covered the usage of the Microsoft SOAP Toolkit which can be used to build web services from DLLs. Lastly, Craig demonstrated how Microsoft .NET makes developing XML web services as easy as 123. Code and demonstrations were provided using legacy Visual Basic 6 and using leading edge C#.

Craig has been writing about web technologies since 1999 and has had many articles published. He regularly presents at developer conferences and is a founder member of Scottish Developers.

Since we arranged this meeting, ITACS hasbeen discontinued. Nevertheless, Frank Waterworth presented a fascinating talk on the Software Improvement Process.