Another milestone for Supermondays

This month’s Supermondays was a bit special, well for me it was anyway! Not because it was on databases, (not that I have anything against databases of course!) or because it was in one of the beautiful old University buildings, but because it saw a landmark in Supermondays development. Contrary to what I said last month, this month was in fact Supermondays’ 1st birthday, so it was quite fitting then, that it was this month that Supermondays founders Ross and Alex, announced that Supermondays is to become a CIC (Community Interest Company). What this means in real terms, is that we will be able to apply for funding and raise money for sponsorship of bigger and better events, perhaps bringing national and international speakers in and hiring bigger venues for some meetings, maybe even the odd sandwich. The CIC is of course is not allowed to make a profit, and all funds must be used for the community, so no big pensions for the Ross or Alex. This might all sound a bit complicated, but there a couple of things you should remember, Supermondays is there solely for the benefit of the people that attend, everyone will have the opportunity to put themselves forward as a speakers and there won’t be a membership fee. I was delighted to be asked to be a member of the CIC, there will be 4 members in total, myself, David Lavery, Mike Parker and James Rutherford. This number will increase as the organisation grows. The role of members is to support the directors, help steer the direction of the CIC and to help ensure that the group are being represented.

But that’s all for the future, so I guess I should really say a little bit about, how mondays session went. This months Supermondays came from the university’s Bedson building, a rather grand red brick building with high ceilinged lecture rooms with old fashioned wooden benches, and plush curtains. This proved to be the perfect setting for this months session which was comprised of 3 talks on the theme of databases. Ross Cooney, kicked things off with a brief history of databases, and the key people that shaped the databases we know today. This was followed up by David Lavery with an excellent talk on how databases have changed over the years in terms of their practical use, and what you needed to do to run some pretty basic functions. From what I could make out databases have come a very long way in a very short time, either that or David is actually 102 and started work from the age of five. David wrapped up with a quick demo of his latest database project. Finally there was a talk or Raquel an open source database project the university are working on.

So, all in all an excellent event, with a bit of history and some ideas for the future.