The position of president comes with the duties of running both a society and overseeing the Skynet Cluster. These duties include:
- Overseeing the running of the Computer Society
- Coordinate the training of new committee
- Finding resolution in cases of dispute among committee and members
- Chair all meetings of the society and prepare an agenda for each meeting beforehand
- Organise and manage a team of society members for both Recruitment Drives
- Liaise with C&S Development Officer (Paul Lee) in areas that need to be discussed e.g. details for the C&S recruitment drive and Redevelopment Fund
- Scheduling events and assigning tasks to committee, making sure all other committee members are doing their jobs and provide help when they need it
- Ensure the growth of the Computer Society in general
- People will approach you at events with ideas and suggestions be receptive to everything. Keep a list if multiple different ideas come in and try to do them and do new stuff throughout the year.
It is not the president’s job to do all the work of the society, if tasks are not delegated properly or are not being carried out. You will end up with a lot of work to do and the end result for the society could be worse events.
## Guide
As President, you will be responsible for the general running of the society and the committee. You should have a good understanding of the Clubs and Societies constitution found on wolves.ie under Resource Documents. Be aware that the Computer Society has its own constitution that it must adhere to. This can be found on our Google Drive.
You should also understand how the Skynet cluster is run (regarding admins and the clusters services). As of 2017 there is a new agreement between the Committee and Admin Team, the document can be viewed here: http://skynet.ie/~cwalsh/protocols_administration_skynet.pdf . It is very important that the new President understands this document to ensure the future of the Skynet Cluster. The computer society has typically been a group of people whose common interest is computers but have interest in much wider fields. You need to make sure that there are things happening to keep members interested and engaged in the society. It doesn't always have to be deeply technical, not everyone will be interested in heavily technical meetups. Even something as simple as meetups over a few pints helps keep things running. It is important to try and have some variety in the meetups also to ensure that everyone is interested. These meetups usually fall into one of the categories of Programming, Electronics, Technology and Social.
We have introduced a new style of event that has no structure and no plans. We simply meet up in a location usually Room 3 (Make sure to block book it early on in September AND again in early January before college starts). This allows members to come and use whatever equipment they desire. They can work on college projects, personal projects or society projects. Occasionally we have tutorial sessions where members can teach other members skills. We labelled these Tuesday Sessions simply due to the convenient fact they were on Tuesdays, but they can be held any time that is suitable. It usually took place from 7-9pm. Maybe try re-introducing this format again in a new way?
PR is important for the society this needs to be really kept on top of. Ensure consistent emails are sent out, make sure you understand how the email mailing list works. One tip that we found worked well was to have multiple people help out with writing the email. Have people write quick paragraphs on sections if they are more knowledgeable on it than the PRO and post it in the PRO chat in our Discord server. Use that chat as a hub to add all the info the PRO needs for the weekly emails and instagram posts etc. This year the PRO always sent the email to me or put it into the PRO chat before it was sent out to the society. Our social media was used effectively this year, and it's something that should be maintained. Also make sure that the emails do go out before the events start and keep on top of the status of how ready the email is. Offer to write parts of the email for the PRO or even send the email the odd week for the PRO to give them some time off. Also make sure to keep wolves updated, the news and activity sections should have all the event details as well.
We aim to have money in the budget this year to have twenty meetups, there should also be money for two social meetups. The social meetups have been historically held in Scholars (Note: The amount of money the society can spend on food per person has increased to €10 per person, maybe confirm this). The most important thing to remember is quality over quantity. Maybe plan bigger events 2 weeks in advance and skip a week or just have a Tuesday session.
Events should be organised based on the wants of the members of the computer society but try to have a variety. For example, if a large base would like to see how to set up WordPress, then you should try to organise a workshop on this. However, you can't keep everyone happy, so don't try. Your main objective is to have vision, direction and come to conclusions, not to keep the committee happy. You will make decisions which people will disagree with, but you're not just here to make friends. If you have a good committee, they will respect the differences of opinion and move on. It is up to you to foster the kind of intra-committee relationships that will allow respectful differences of opinion instead of destructive bickering.
As President, you chair the committee meetings and the societies AGM. Committee meetings should be held early every week (usually Monday) for an hour (or less). You may decide to bring every committee member to every meeting or have smaller meetings. You should have some with all people. If you are having smaller meetings, it is important to keep the rest of the committee up to date with a weekly email or similar. You need to ensure that an agenda is prepared before each meeting and email it out to committee a few days beforehand for review. If you prepare the agenda in Google Docs and share a link to the editable version it allows the committee to add items, this reduces the amount of AOB in the meeting.
Committee meetings can be held in the Server Room if it is a smaller or rushed meeting a room might not be available, and the TV is handy for meetings. Booking a room in the library is also very easy for larger meetings. Note: Alumni members don’t have student cards to access the library. This year we used Room 2 in Student Life and it worked well. There was adequate space, and it’s near the server room to go to after to get other jobs done. It's up to you to ensure all those present get a fair chance to put their point across. It is also important that you know what's happening within the society at all levels. Since the President is frequently looked up to as the leader (even subconsciously) it is important to hold your own opinions until the others have outlined theirs first. Allow the discussion to develop before you bring your own opinions to the table, quite often this will be the conclusion of the discussion, with your opinion shaping the final decision of the committee rather than influencing the discussion from the outset. You also need to keep the committee meetings moving and not allow the committee to become “bogged down” on any one issue. Don’t allow any one issue become the primary focus of the committee meetings because the weekly running of society should be the primary focus of these meetings, if Skynet or any other issue require major attention a separate meeting should be called with some committee members. If the society is buying stuff always try to get a discount or sponsorship as this saves us money and can count as income. The society has secured a lot of money in sponsorship through the years and this was done by directly contacting companies that we were planning to buy stuff from explain who we were and offer them exposure. It doesn't always work, but we have been very successful at doing this. I have a folder (nearly 10GB in size) that contains all the resources I have ever used for the society and Skynet. You get a copy of this folder by contacting me. It contains everything that I used during my presidency, and you should definitely look for a copy of this from me, add to it and then pass it on to your successor. In recent years the Games Society has allowed us to use a room in EG010 under their legacy booking, this is very handy, but it has let us down a few times. If you want to do this again contact Games Society to make use that it is still OK. I would suggest talking to Aisling about how to book a room for a few weeks in a row, but this is unpredictable as the Room Bookings department will assign the room, and you have no control over what room it is.
The budget is a very important process and should involve as many committee members as possible throughout the year, it should not be left to one person at the end of the year. Irregular Expenditure should be voted on by committee. You should be able to look at the submitted budget from the end of September onwards. Budget points are very important, and you should always be on the lookout for opportunities to gain more points. Points are given for Guest Speakers, High Profile Speakers, Events, Showcase Events (Big on campus events), Publicity, proper minutes, proper use of Wolves.ie, etc. At the end of your tenure as President, you must make sure that the incoming President is well briefed on the role. If possible, it is advisable to retain a role on the next committee to facilitate the transition but be wary of being a backseat President. If you know in advance that you won’t be seeking re-election as President, you should let the committee know this and start grooming a successor from within the current committee. You should work to ensure good continuity from one committee to the next. Many societies fall on hard times as we had.
As the second semester progresses you should be listening to the existing committee about their intentions for the following year, especially core positions. If people are not planning to take up the same roles the following year, you need to be thinking about who might replace them. Canvass the committee members for interest in shadowing the core positions with a view to taking over the following year. On this basis, it’s important to have a good crew of OCMs on board, use the less important positions to bring new people on board each year and ensure they are engaged in the work of the committee through the year.
## Plans for next year
● Recruitment Drive: The semester 1 Recruitment drive is going ahead so a lot of planning will have to be done. I will help you out with this and so will some previous committee members, so you won’t be alone. It will involve a lot of emails and contacting people and members to help out. For you the February one is the first important one to get right. However, as well as setting up the networking and power for the recruitment drive (Our biggest source of income every year). We have to recruit a lot of new members this year (and every year). We spent a lot of money on promotional material for the society in the last few years, this includes a pull-up banner, business cards, laptop stickers (members only), flag and jackets (for committee during events), so make sure to make full use of all of these items to get us noticed and get people to sign up. An area has been approved for us to set up the HTC Vive in the arena (confirm this). The Rec Drive setup should start at 8am and hopefully be fully delivered by 2pm. Teardown starts whenever the Rec Drive is over and usually is fully finished by 10pm. It is important that we co-ordinate with OPC to ensure that they can drive the Sprinter for us to move equipment from the SU to the Arena and back. 3km of cabling, 12 ethernet switches, over 200 data points, 8 help desk PCs and 10 Wi-Fi networks need to be setup by us before the Drive starts. Martin in ITD needs to be contacted before the event to organise opening a port for us in the Arena to connect to the UL network, he can be contacted at Martin.Moran@ul.ie. Get as many people as possible to help set this up. It is a great opportunity to train members in networking, try to ensure that there is always at least 3 people there during setup. Buy pizza for everyone afterward and use this for motivation. This is very important as this event and the one in February (much smaller and easier to do) pay for most of our events during the year (€2,500).
Code Offs: These programming competition events have been very successful for us, try to run one at least once a semester. We have an automated way of judging these competitions as they can be very difficult and stressful to judge in an efficient manner. Check the president folder for more information. Attendees complete the questions the software ranks their submissions and award points. It is usually 2 hours with 4 questions. It costs €2 to enter. A main competition and a first-year competition work well. We usually get Red Bull to sponsor these events. Contact me for previous questions
This is the full list of committee suggested events, I just wanted to highlight some important information in the above points
- AGM (DO NOT PUT THIS FIRST)
- Electronics Build (Gaming PC, 3D Printer)
- Cinema Trip or Industry Speaker
- Movie night (on campus)
- Social Meetup Trip to Google / Somewhere / Sistem
- Collab Event with NUIG CompSoc (timmy@compsoc.ie)
- Code Off
- VIVE Event
- Jackbox Event
- Show & Tell/Maker Fair/Lightning rounds (Second Semester)
- Drone Night
- Smart Home Event
You could also try some monthly events like a newspaper or adding tech news to emails or putting it into the general chat.
Maybe plan a EuroTrip/Ireland and UK Trip for the summer. Make a smaller subcommittee to organise it. Split the costs roughly 60:40 or 55:45 between the society:members and plan for 10-15 people to go. There is a trip proposal for London and Prague so maybe refresh that and look into those two cities. Remember it's not a holiday so lots of technical museums etc. and the odd bit of fun ;D
## Useful Contacts
- Paul Lee – C&S Development Manager: paul.lee@ul.ie
- Patricia Moriarty –Arts & Sports Fund and Movie Screening Licenses: patricia.moriarty@ul.ie
- Denis Moore –Lab Technician for ECE networking lab: denis.moore@ul.ie
- Clem O’Donnell –Head of ICT Learning Centre: clem.odonnell@ul.ie
- Individual Club and Society Contacts can be got from the screens outside the C&S Office
## Summary
In conclusion, it’s a big job with massive responsibility. It will test you, and you will gain new skills when dealing with people. I appreciated the massive work done by my committee and everyone who has come before me, in previous year. This is what makes the society great, you can always ask someone for help. Ask me, ask someone when you need help it does make a difference. Contact me at leokuhs@gmail.com for the president folder and for any other queries that anyone who ever reads this document has something that wants answered. (I’m doing a masters, so I should be around for another two years so don’t hesitate to ask) Don’t be the one stuck with all the work, delegate tasks. Best of luck and I look forward to seeing the impact you will make on the society.
