 OK. Thank you very much. So we're delighted to be at the ALT conference this year, sponsoring the meeting. Is there a sign-in sheet? So as I say, we're delighted to be here sponsoring the ALT conference with the application that is MeToo. I hope that you've managed to experience MeToo in some of the sessions or you've managed to pop by to our booth. I think it's booth number three. If you haven't then we'll be delighted to welcome you to present MeToo to you. So MeToo is powered by Loomey and another application that Loomey provides as well is something that we call Loomey AGM Mobile. Loomey AGM Mobile is used in corporate AGMs around the world, here in the UK obviously with FTSE 100 companies. It's used for associations and unions and of course what it is used for is to facilitate the legal voting at those meetings and also to conduct some moderated Q&A. So I hope you enjoy using the platform today and we'll facilitate this meeting. So Loomey AGM Mobile is available as MeToo is available on all platforms that is browser-based and that's obviously Safari, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer or it is a native application as well that is of course iOS and Android. So please feel free to either download the application if you have done so already then thank you or obviously access via the web browser. If you haven't downloaded the application now maybe probably the best thing to do is actually to go via the browser channel. It's a little bit quicker obviously without downloading an app and that is web.loomeyagm, that's L-U-M-I-A-G-M dot com. When you access the platform on whatever platform you do you will then be presented with the meeting ID number. That is a very specific meeting ID number that is for the ALT conference only. And that meeting ID number is on the screen there. It is 135656831. When you enter that meeting ID you'll then be asked for your username and password. The username I believe has been communicated to you via email that is your number. And then the password is a generic password for everybody and that is ALT underscore AGM 1616. All lower case. And when you access the platform you have then obviously authenticated yourself into the AGM and we will register your attendance. And then on the platform I hope you'll be able to experience on that info screen some very useful links to you that obviously are linked to BDF documents, minutes etc from previous meetings. And then of course you can vote. When we announce the resolutions you will see the voting options appear on your device. They will be pushed to your device and you will press obviously your desired choice by selecting that option. One for forward, two for against or to press the abstain option. There is another facility as well that is Q&A. Feel free to ask any questions via that platform or of course via the usual method a verbal question as well. And that will be moderated and then obviously passed to the top table here. So thank you very much and of course will help anybody who needs help. But I hope it's a very good experience for you. Thank you. Thank you very much, thank you. Okay now so on to item three. Approval of the minutes of the last general meeting. We've got two sets of minutes from 2015 because we've got two charities going. Is anybody here from who was here at the meeting last year? We need some people, excellent. And we need someone to propose and second both sets of minutes are okay. So propose a James Clay, thank you James. We need a second. Sheila, thank you. And on to item four. Matters arising from the minutes of the last general meeting. Are there any un-matters arising for anyone? We don't have any, there's no outstanding action. Okay. Item five, annual report and accounts for 2015-16. I'm just going to hand over to Daniel Clarke, who's our honorary treasurer and Nicola Cadwaladr Alts Auditor. Great, thanks Fiona. So very warm welcome to the AGM. I do remember the first time I attended being told that of the many exciting things that happen at Altsy. This may not be the most exciting but it is the one that is a legal requirement. Alts actually has to hold this meeting in order to exist. So thank you very much for being here and helping us to carry on for another year. Those of you who don't know me, this is my first year as honorary treasurer. My name is Daniel Clarke. I'm a chance to count on my background. I've worked in finance for a while, worked in your online education, been a member for several years. And took over last year from Hayden Blackie, who many of you will know who's now happily enjoying his well-earned retirement as the honorary treasurer. Now Hayden had to deal with some pretty slightly more difficult issues because last year, those of you who are here last year will know that Alts at that time had a few, there was a hole basically in the financial position caused by reduction in external funding, which most of you will be familiar with has happened across the sector. And the plan at that time for the trustees put in place was to ensure that Alts core activities were funded by core recurring, largely recurring income. So the core sort of funding requirement of Alts really is to do with staff and premises and related costs. And the core income is membership income, both individual and institutional. Also the conferences and to some extent the C-malt certification fees. Now what, if you look at the accounts for this year, or the year ended last January, what they show is that actually that strategy has been very successful. And ahead of our target, we have managed to establish a situation where those core funding needs are met by those core recurring income. So that's, can't take too much credit for that, that's mostly down to Hayden, the trustee team and the staff team, but that's a very pleasing result to be able to support. So the overall position in the financial statements are that we've achieved a surplus of £9,000 for this year, which is a really great result that shows we are financially stable. We are optimistic, looking at what's happened this year so far, that that stability will continue and that we will continue in that sort of position. I just wanted to make a couple of observations just based on my experiences as Treasurer over the last year that I just wanted to very quickly share with you. Firstly, the things really struck me, meeting Mawryn and the team and so on, is that ALT can seem at times like a very big organisation. You come to events like this and there's hundreds of people and there's big name speakers and have huge impact. The core organisation is actually pretty small. It's a pretty small team in a room in Oxford working there, but manages to generate a huge amount of impact and that I think is partly testament to some very smart use of time and resources. It's also very much testament to you guys, to the membership of ALT, many of whom get involved with committees, get involved with local groups, get involved with the discussion group, do all sorts of things, because we all care about this whole issue. We put a lot into the organisation and get a lot out of it. So, it's just striking, with my finance hat on, to look at the accounts and see that the numbers aren't that big and yet it's an organisation that generates huge impact, so it just really struck me. The second point is a slightly more technical point, FMA. We went through a process this year of reviewing our audit arrangements and that resulted in appointing new auditors, David Cudwell-Donco, with Nicola Rezaff, audit partner, who's been incredibly helpful to us. It's been a really good change. At the time, it's worth at least considering the fact that the charity of ALT's size isn't legally required to have a full audit. We are small enough that we could do without it. There is a cost, a fairly modest cost, isn't it? There is a cost to it, but we think it's important. We think it's really important to have someone independent, trained, qualified, come in, review our finances, sign off that, in her opinion, they are true and fair, because that's part of our responsibility to show that we're being very transparent in how we handle resources, in how we use them, and that you can have assurance in our stewardship of those funds. We've asked Nicola to come along, and she's very kindly agreed to come in person and talk to you about the two sets of accounts and a few other issues. Following Nicola's presentation, we'll both be available to take any questions you might have about the finances. So, as Daniel said, and hopefully you've seen, there's two sets of accounts this year because there have been two charities operating in the era. I understand that the formal transfer from one to the other was done at last year's AGM. So, the old charity, with the charity number 1063519, has had accounts prepared showing the income and expenditure up to the date of transfer of September 9, 2015, and then it showed that all the funds got transferred over to the new charity at that date, and there's therefore nil balance sheet, nothing left in the old charity. So, just for completeness, those accounts would need to be filed with the charity commission as do the new ones. The new ones, however, have been prepared under what's called merger accounting, which means quite straightforwardly what they include is all of the income and expenditure for this year, the comparative show all of the income and expenditure for last year under the old charity, and the balance sheets are again comparable across the two entities, which I think is actually that's the requirement of the new sort, which is the statement of recommended practice for accounting for charities, and I think that probably makes sense for the layperson. It means that you can see, actually, irrespective of the change in the legal structure of the charity, you can compare like with like Daniel's taking you through the figures and giving you an overview of the way that they do compare with last year. I've audited both sets of accounts. Both sets of accounts have an audit report on them and both audit reports are absolutely clear, clean, unqualified, meaning that there are no issues that need to be brought to the trustee's attention and that, as Daniel says, that the accounts are true and fair. As part of our audit work, I'll do what's called a report to management, explaining any significant weaknesses that we find in the charities accounting systems and procedures and I'm pleased to report that there were no issues that I needed to report to the trustee's this year. So that's it really. I think it should be fairly straightforward and hopefully any questions? OK. OK, so so if there are no questions, we need to, the agent needs to approve the accounts and so I need a proposer for the motion to approve the accounts. Alison Clarke, thank you. Ben State, thank you. So the vote is now open. You should be seeing the resolution and the voting options on your device. Pause for five more seconds. Yes, and yes. The number of votes that you are allocated is in the system so you are voting on behalf of multiple votes in your one vote, yes. OK, it appears that everybody seems to vote. It's gone, the vote is now steady. So I'll close the vote. Thank you very much, thank you everyone. Item six now, the appointment of an auditor for the 2016-17 accounts and we propose that David, Cadwaladr and Co-Limited accountants of Chesterton be appointed as auditors. Can we have a seconder? OK, we can put that to a vote now. So the vote is now open. I can see you're all very quick that time so the vote is now steady. And I will close the poll now and the results are on the screen. The resolution reference appears on the top. So it says resolution two, which we are voting on now. OK, lovely, thank you. So that's approved, yep. OK, item seven, a brief verbal report from Marron and the award of honorary life membership. Oh, now I wanted to just say thank you to Pete for facilitating our voting that concludes the technically challenging part of the ATM and we appreciate your core operation in trialling this with us this year. Now, I have the privilege of giving you a very brief report as Alts Chief Executive and I wanted to start this year with talking about delivering our strategy. Fiona and I together and on behalf of the Board of Trustees wrote to you at the end of last year when we reviewed how much progress we had made in delivering the association strategy since its beginning and we're now only five, six months away from launching the next one and we've made outstanding progress in all of the different areas. But there is one in particular that I wanted to reflect on today with you particularly as we're here bringing together our community through the conference this year which is a phenomenal growth of members groups and also special interest groups across the UK. Many of you will know that this afternoon in fact in the last session a lot of our members groups are getting together yesterday the East Midlands members group has already met and as you can see our world domination is only one step away now with active groups all across the UK happening. Now while that is a wonderful development it also proposes real operational challenges and I think when Daniel said that we achieve a lot of impact with very little resource he was not exaggerating. So I wanted to point out my colleagues Jane Frankel who looks after our finance Jane if you wanted to give a little wave and say hello and also my colleague Anna David who is our events manager and will obviously be hosting you here today and last sitting in the front here is Tom Palmer who looks after our membership so hopefully all of you will know Tom and I think some of you will know that this is the first time that we have met each other and that we have met each other Tom and I think someone's hiding behind the screen so I'm not sure if you might be able to see him or not but invisible magic as always by our own Martin Hoagsy who's supporting the AGM live and enabling the streaming so all of us are very proud in the role we play alongside you and our Board of Trustees in what we deliver in the old strategy and it is very much an association powered by members and I think this should be our new strap line because a lot of what we do all across our publications from the blogs to the journals and we have a burgeoning count of blogs to a symposium that was hosted by government earlier this year when we talked about learning technology and further and higher education to a new portfolio sharing initiative for Seamult and then I pray you note official business that I now am a certified member I wanted to point out thank you very much so hopefully that will give me and my colleagues an even better understanding of how to support you but it's not to be underestimated the power we have as a community and I feel we've had a very bleak summer not necessarily in learning technology but in general in the UK with a lot of upheaval to come and our strategy for the next three years starting in February 2017 it's not just going to have to re-emphasise our values of openness of colour aberration and of community that can sometimes feel like they are on the threat but also ensure that on an operational footing we are on a safe and secure established base so that we can make sure that learning technology really goes from strength to strength not just into the mainstream but also supporting learners and teachers across all the different education sectors that we need to be about so I think this is a pivotal time for us for the next few months and we have opened a suggestion box for the strategy in case we need your bright ideas but also Tom's put suggestion box forums on the outstand so that you can contribute yourself and we hope very much to hear from you and every single one of you has a unique perspective experience from your institution your career, your professional experience that we need to benefit from to represent you at our most powerful, at government level nationally and internationally we need to hear from you so please do come and tell us all feedback is what we really need to get done back but now a last item to report on I haven't had the privilege of reporting on since 2012 when we celebrated Seb Shmuller, our last chief executive, my predecessor so this year it is a special privilege to be presenting two awards the first one is the 2016 award of honorary life membership of the association for learning technology and I put some quotes up from the nomination that I'm going to read out I hope I've obscured a little bit of who it might be so that attention should rise now appropriately a highly internationally respected scholar whose contribution to research and policy has been highly influential also their long-term involvement in developing the academic quality of the network learning conference as a member of the scientific community has been outstanding of note is their determination to support the emerging community through their approachable supportive nature for junior colleagues and the net generation project illustrates impact in influencing national policy what makes this nominee exceptional? it is rare to see such a collection of warm and glowing tributes from such an impressive range of colleagues for one person as soon as we made it known that we were putting together this nomination we have been inundated by people keen to contribute and indeed I could have filled 10 slides with the feedback that we received so after careful consideration by the panel of trustees who oversaw the selection process this year we are very pleased and proud to announce that the 2016 honorary life membership of ALT goes to Professor Chris Jones please give him a round of applause thank you very much that's possibly the most embarrassing minute or two that I've had for a long time one of the things I've got to say is a really big thank you to Liverpool University colleagues who nominated me because just being nominated was in all thin a way because the fact that somebody thought of putting me forward really made me very pleased indeed so you can imagine how pleased I was when I got an email saying you can't tell anyone which was very difficult as we had a North West England meeting in the intervening period between getting that email and arriving here so I had to keep my mouth short which was extremely difficult for me as some of you will know it's really important to me to get this also because this is one of the communities that I'm most value so all my academic career I've been a member I think an individual member for most of the time and a corporate member for those early years when I wasn't an individual member and it's been extremely important for me as an academic who's working primarily in that field to have this reference group a lot of the people who've done masters and doctoral qualifications that I've been involved with are now part of this community and I think that's really really important we keep that link the journal is an excellent example of maintaining that link and the conference is another excellent example of how we keep that link between academic work and the solid work of the practitioners in this community so very very pleased to get this thank you very very much now you might think that was excitement enough but last year there was also a nomination and the award which was made unanimously had to be deferred because the individual for the first time in our history was ineligible to be awarded in that particular year however they are this year and so retrospectively for 2015 we will make a second award today now I have to say while I really struggled to fit all of Chris's plaudits on to PowerPoint I struggled to fit these quotes on to less than a book because this individual I feel ill-qualified to introduce having contributed to leading thinking in the sector and across all sectors of education for several decades from a beginning as a maths lecturer going on to publish more publications than I can possibly mention and research papers including an outstanding first book called Rethinking University Teaching a conversational framework for the effective use of learning technologies which might give those of you who read these books a bit of a clue which carried on with Sir Conment to government's education department at the time we might have come full circle in that respect again developing a cross sector e-learning strategy of world first which I think we would still benefit from today if we only had such a thing but I think the personal qualities as well as their outstanding academic research and policy achievement on a national and international level is what make this individual member such a worthy recipient because in a community where we value collaboration so highly where support particularly for young career researchers for women for different sectors is so crucial they have made the biggest impact highly respected by researchers, practitioners and government alike and someone whose passion for supporting teachers and learners is a driving force for change in the sector personally I feel very humbled that we have her here today as we nominate Diana Laurellard for our honorary life membership I don't know what you mean Chris embarrassing, God it really is isn't it and I have to say I was just so delighted when I heard about this and I've had to keep it secret for a year I mean just imagine that I've been I've been in this field for as long as I can remember and my memory isn't that good but it seems pretty much like a lifetime I've certainly been a member of Alt for all of its life you've got me for life and for you to take the trouble to give me an honorary life membership is just wonderful and I really thank you for that because as Maron said the relationship that I've had with Alt has been so important in each stage of the different bits of my career involving learning technology and right from Alt's very inception around the time that I was in the Department for Education and Skills trying to put together this cross sector e-learning strategy having Alt there and Seb there to power along and make the debate and make the case for what we were trying to do was so important and ever since then and the recent collaboration that we've had with Alt to put together the first MOOC on blended learning for the AFI sector it's all been so important and the reason that you stay passionate that everybody here stays passionate I think is that we all understand that there's nothing more important than education for world peace and prosperity there is nothing more important than education for that and if you've got such a big idea such a big ambition you've got to use technology to help you do it there's nothing more important to be working on in this world than learning technology and the association helps us to do that so thank you so much and thank you so much for this great honour I'm absolutely excited right now after I have nothing to top that it just leaves me to say thank you for your support over the last year together with my colleagues we were very hard to do the best for our community we were very proud to serve you so I hope that you enjoyed the rest of the conference and I'll hand back over to Fiona to continue the business of the AGM thank you ok that's lovely so now it's on to item 9 the election to trustee vacancies and it's time to announce the results of the election first of all a vice chair for the association an ex-officio member of the committee who will become chair in 2017 and president in 2018 and it's our absolute pleasure to announce that Sheila McNeill has been elected unopposed well done Sheila and secondly we have two individuals to serve for three years as trustees of ALT from September this year we've got two trustees who are Bella Abrams and Lorna Campbell so again congratulations to all of you so I'm just going to invite Martin weller to come up with me right now who is the chair of ALT from this meeting yeah we're singing our way we also thought it would be very appropriate at this moment normally what would happen is the president would hand over to the chair and that would have worked but unfortunately we just thought it would take a moment to remember that Doug Gowan sadly passed away in February this year we're very very sad about that obviously but we want to remember him today we thought we'd just take a moment to show a couple of slides representing his work for us as ALT we're very fond of ALT he was very significant in the work that we did he was very supportive of Marin for a long time working very closely with her and for a short time with me but we did get to work with him so it was very very important that we should recognise his contribution here he would be with us I'm sure so in memory of Doug Gowan we are launching a fund to support 10 individuals from the learning and skills sector to achieve sea malt accreditation first as a sea malt holder and later as a trustee of ALT Doug took an active interest in the development and scheme to recognise it's important for individuals in the learning and skills sector in particular so we just thought if we just put our hands together now just to say thank you to Doug for allowing us to do this in his memory obviously you can see there that Ella Elgarabiti will be up there and published on our website but yeah so anyway so I think that concludes our AGM on a slightly sad note but we're very happy with the new members so that's a good thing ok so thank you all very much for attending thank you