I became the President at a time when people were reluctant to take on the responsibility. I have acted in this role to the best of my ability. This means all those who have worked with me and supported me, as the Committee, have been on the edge of their seats wondering what I will do next.

I am motivated by the lessons I have learnt from the emergence of the Web - what most of you probably call the Internet. I am so pleased that we now have an equalising technology: it costs no more to give everyone access to information than to give it to a few. This means, to me, that we can allow people to educate themselves with dignity, regardless of how much money they have to spend; that people can be given access to news and opportunities, and more but it also means a number of things that require consideration and effort. These are often of as much interest to me as anything else.

For example, I have worked for 20 years now with those concerned to make what is published digitally accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities. Technically this can be challenging but with care, inaccessibility can be avoided.

It has also meant a huge change in the organisations we engage with. Lots can be made available to us for free but some of that, in fact most probably, what appears to be free is paid for by our contributions of what we assume is confidential information. On the other hand, we have learnt that we have been able to develop new concepts such as crowd-funding. Crowd funding exists because a very wide range of people can be offered a way to participate in an activity and some of them will choose to contribute money, time, ideas, whatever is sought.

It means that get-togethers have been transformed. Many get-togethers happen on what we know as social media - people don't get together at all but they share images, ideas, news, jokes, whatever.

So for me, BMUG can continue as it was or it can change to take advantage, as best it can, of the new possibilities. I have tried to introduce practices appropriate to the current status of BMUG as an unincorporated association and the available technologies. I have been concerned about accessibility, committee obligations and responsibilities, members who attend our monthly meetings and those who don't.

A couple of years ago, Len Gould went to the trouble to run a session focussed on what BMUG members wanted from BMUG. His report was filed but not enacted until this year. Based on the report, the current Committee has tried to make changes that will support the directions his report suggested.

The recent changes have happened on the surface and 'under the 'hood'. Committee members have had to change a number of practices that were clearly paper-based in favour of digital systems. We are moving from having files scattered across computers at risk of being lost to having automatically generated records and thus privacy, security and longevity guaranteed.

We now have about 70 paid-up members but about 90 people who receive our newsletter and many more who visit our website. We offer notes about what happens at our meetings so those who attend need not takes notes and those who do not attend can also benefit. We have uploaded all the old newsletters and gone through them to develop an index of still relevant articles - not complete yet. We have product reviews and tips being contributed to the website.

I hope that the changes, which I know have disappointed some, have also pleased at least some members. Thank you for your support,

Please help us  by paying your membership fees!

Liddy Nevile