BCS presidents past and present

Sir Maurice Wilkes pictured during the early days of the BCS

What were the original motivations for starting the BCS?

MW: When we began the society there was no particular forum for people with a real interest in computers and their application. Within my own laboratory at Cambridge there were Thursday afternoon seminars which were extremely popular. But this did not help those around the country who were interested in computing.

Business people who wanted to talk about their computing problems formed the London Computer Society. There quickly developed a recognition that a national body was required. Its founders wanted a comprehensive organisation, not just a business-oriented club.

So although many of the early participants came from business, they understood the importance of the research and academic elements. This has always been a strength of the BCS. We recognised a role for the BCS as a professional body and as a learned society.

I was on the technical programming side and lectured throughout the UK to newly-formed branches – at this time branches were springing up rapidly. We also ran seminars devoted to computer engineering. These were for those building computers, developing systems libraries, and so on.

In its early days the society was very much a communications channel, a forum for like-minded individuals to share their experience, problems and solutions.

What BCS achievement are you most happy about?

MW: The fact that we began a society that met a clear need, and attracted young people with a real commitment to developing computing in this country.
NS: That 50 years on we retain our original energy and commitment.

IT and computing has been transformational – it has changed our world. We can look back with real pride to the contribution that the BCS and its members have made.

But because IT and computing is now so ubiquitous we need to embrace a broad spectrum of individuals and organisations who use, develop and deploy systems in a wide variety of contexts and sectors.

Where should the BCS now be expending its energies?

NS: Maintaining our momentum. Understanding the relationships between the various species of IT and computing. We also need to develop and execute on our professionalism programme.

The original charter of the BCS states that we exist to teach and research computing for the benefit of the public.

I believe passionately we need to explain our subject, its impact, excitement and opportunities to a wider public. This will help attract our brightest and best youngsters into the profession. Frankly, we are not very good at conveying the excitement of our subject.

Too often IT is seen as a clerical or simply a vocational set of skills.

IT literacy is important, but it doesn't produce the next generation of researchers. Teaching IT literacy does not produce individuals able to think and deploy problem-solving skills. Were we to teach computational thinking more rigorously, we would focus on just such problem-solving skills.

Computational thinking is about teaching students to ask questions such as what can be computed, what kind of solution works, what form of representation best serves problem-solving, how can a complex problem be abstracted or else decomposed. US academic Jeanette Wing has argued that these skills are as important as numeracy, reading and writing.

MW: Our subject has always been exciting. It needs to be kept exciting and that excitement effectively communicated to our young people.

What will/should the professionalism programme achieve?

NS: It will provide a framework within which we can be confident as to the competence, experience and ability of individuals. This is particularly important in the application of information systems to business and organisational contexts.

A key to this is the CITP standard – we want employers to see this as something positive, a qualification that gives them confidence in the skills and capabilities of those who have it. It should be seen as complementary to the other chartered qualifications the BCS is able to confer – CEng emphasises engineering competence and CSci focuses on the analytic and formal underpinnings of our subject.

Our discipline has benefited enormously from the input of engineers, physicists, mathematicians, human and social scientists. Professionalism is as much about knowing the limits of one’s own competence and calling upon the knowledge and ingenuity of others. We need to recognise the interdisciplinary character of modern information systems.

MW: The word interdisciplinary is important. Computing was born out of the intersection of a number of disciplines – electronics and engineering, physics and mathematics.

Its application has always been broad-based – banking and the retail sector, manufacturing and the engineering sector. We have always been like that.

Computer scientist Vint Cerf thinks we should provide a challenge such as addressing global warming to get younger people engaged.

NS: When you're young you have fire in your belly. You want to make a difference and put the world to rights. My children are concerned by the global challenges they know their generation will have to deal with.

Understanding climate change, eliminating poverty, making efficient use of energy – on each of these and many more subjects technology will be essential.

Grand challenges can be a very effective way of recruiting people’s energies and motivating them.

How has the BCS changed in your time?

MW: The industry has grown up and matured. The BCS is more complex because computing has become so elaborate – it is embedded in so many aspects of the modern world.

The BCS is trying to support a developing profession. As well as the excellent work of our staff we rely on our members for their voluntary effort.

As we grow larger, staying in touch with our members and volunteers becomes more challenging. But we must never forget that our volunteers provide much of the energy and enthusiasm that the BCS needs to thrive.

NS: The big change for the BCS has been the finances. It is so much easier to focus on your objectives with sound finances. Another recent change is in the average age of new members – it has gone from 38 to 28 in recent years.