ACCU Conference News

And So ACCU 2019 Begins

20 June 2018

OK so ACCU 2019 isn’t actually happening any time soon – it is scheduled for 2019-04-09 to 2019-04-13, but preparation and planning takes quite a long time. So this is really "Planning and Preparation for ACCU 2019 has Begun".

We have a nice logo. Well, obviously, it is essentially the same logo as ever but with a numeral changed and in a different colour – continuity of brand imagery has a lot going for it. We hope you like the colour – or if you are in the USA: color :-).

Of course, there can be no ACCU conference without good content, and good content requires lots of good submissions so the committee can select from them to create a great schedule. We are busy, OK I am busy, updating the submission Web application in the light of experience from last year. As there should be in any project, there is a deadline for these changes, and that is 2018-10-05. Why is that? Because that is the date of the opening of the Call for Proposals. This is really what this post is about, the Call for Proposals.

The Call for Proposals will open 2018-10-05T10:00+00:00.

The Call for Proposals will close 2018-10-26T19:00+00:00.

So as to be fair to everyone who submits, these date/times are not negotiable. Neither will there be any extensions^[1]

Anyone who has an idea for an ACCU conference session should think it through, plan it, and create the proposal ready to submit it during the Call for Proposals. Details on the sort of sessions at an ACCU conference are given on the front page of the website.

You have three months. Get planning to submit.

1. If, as there was a couple of years ago, there is a problem with the submission system such that people cannot submit or amend proposals during the Call for Proposals, then appropriate negotiations or extensions will happen. I think it fair to say this is the only situation in which it would happen.

Schedule Web App

4 April 2018

For ACCU 2017, Austin Bingham of Sixty North created an ACCU conference schedule Web application implemented in Elm. After the conference he donated the code to the ACCU Conference. Sadly, despite lots of good intentions, it has not been developed over the year. It seems though right to have it running anyway. So the ACCU 2018 schedule Web application is at https://testconference.accu.org/schedule_app/

If you do want to get stuck in to helping to develop the Web app the master Git repository is at https://github.com/ACCUConf/ACCUConf_Schedule_Web_Application

Marriott Hotel and The News

13 March 2018

A couple of people contacted us about this government document that was released 2018-03-09. It named The Marriott Hotel in Luton as having paid workers less than the national minimum wage. The people that contacted us were concerned that ACCU 2018 was being held at a Marriott Hotel (the Bristol Marriott Hotel City Centre) and they were worried that Marriott Hotels were paying people less than the minimum wage, and that ACCU should not be associated with such a hotel.

AYA (the ACCU organisers) have had an excellent relationship with the Bristol Marriott Hotel City Centre people since we moved from Oxford to Bristol, and we felt confident there was no problem with this hotel. However, we felt it prudent to ask them explicitly about this issue. For sensible reasons, rather than just make a local informal verbal statement, Marriott Hotels head office have created a formal public statement that they have authorised us to publish:

Marriott is committed to compliance with the national minimum wage. When an error was identified by a routine HMRC audit in 2015, we cooperated fully with HMRC and promptly reimbursed all those affected. We apologised to all our associates impacted by this error and have taken steps to ensure it cannot happen again.

This relates to technical underpayments made in 2015 where some hotels made deductions from wages for live-in accommodation or late-night taxi services. Despite acting in good faith, and with full consent from associates, these deductions were not permissible by HMRC as they lowered the impacted associates’ salary below minimum wage.

When Marriott first became aware of the issue, we immediately suspended all non-statutory deductions. We have since updated our payroll processes so this cannot happen again.

I would like to thank the Bristol Marriott Hotel City Centre staff for taking our enquiry seriously, and not only giving AYA verbal assurances, but also "escalating" things so as to get this public statement for us to publish and so explicitly answer the concerns of the people who original raised the issue. Not only can ACCU 2018 go ahead in full knowledge there isn’t an issue, we can continue with our plans for 2019.

Session timetable swap

7 March 2018

There has been lots of activity in ACCU organising over the last two months, but we failed to tell people the news. Our "There is a month to go" resolution is to report more news.

The news of the moment is that we have swapped a couple of sessions: Eoin Woods' session "Common Webapp Vulnerabilities and What to Do About Them" has moved from Wednesday 2018-04-11T16:00+01:00 to Thursday 2018-04-12T16:00+01:00, and Florian Gilcher’s session "Three years of Rust – A look around" has moved a day forward and will be where Eoin’s session was, i.e. it’s a straight swap of schedule slot.

As ever the current state of the schedule is at https://conference.accu.org/2018/schedule.html

Sorry We're Late

15 January 2018

Due to some circumstances beyond our control, but also some problems at our end, we failed to meet the posted deadlines of 2018-01-12 for notification, and 2018-01-19 for publishing the schedule.

We have slipped everything by a week from today and should have everything sorted and published by 2018-01-29, but hopefully sooner.

Sorry.