The Coventry Branch was the fifth regional BCS branch to form, being established in April 1965 and 2015 is our 50th Anniversary.
We aim to run 8 open meetings throughout this year; they are generally scheduled for the third wednesday of every month September to May. (However we may vary this depending on feedback from our members)
The branch is particularly active in education and used to run the competition “Challenge IT” every two years, with the Exhibition and Awards Ceremony as part of National Science and Engineering Week. Once the GCSE Computing syllabus changed, and the CAS Hubs were set up, there was less need for us to support IT teachers, and as the committee shrank due to peope retiring, we stopped running that competition.
Each December we have a Christmas Prestige Lecture in conjunction with other professional bodies in this area. Our Annual General Meeting is normally in September or October.
All are welcome to attend, not just Branch Members, all meetings are free to attend, and booking is not normally required; just show up. We’ll even provide pre-meeting refreshments. All we ask is that you sign in so we can count you.
2019-2021: Did we ever jinx that? Clearly, “normally” we have a Christmas lecture and “normally” booking is not required… but due to Covid-19 a “new normal” has arisen, until the pandemic is over our meetings are all by webinar, and we get you to book so we can send you the webinar link etc. Please see our webinar page for more information.
2022 – Having seen a sharp increase in the numbers of people attending our webinars over the physical meetings, we now tend to favour online offerings, which also offer the advantage of being easily recorded for those who are unable to join the meeting at the time. This has allowed us to offer more value, plus members drink their own tea and eat their own biscuits, saving Branch buget (which is fortuitous, as the overall membership of the BCS “wobbled” during the pandemic).