 Thank you very much again for participating in our first GASTA and we'll see you this evening or now at the AGM. All right, fantastic, we're going to get straight on the way with the AGM and I'm going to hand over to our president, Martin Weller, to open the proceedings. So please, before Martin gets us underway, make sure you sign in. This is an important part of our annual governance. Signing in sheets are going round. Also voting cards are going round. If you are a member, there will be instructions on the screen on how to vote at each resolution and you should have a card to vote with. My colleagues here from the staff team will help you vote. If you're not sure how or you're not sure if you're eligible, we have a list to check. So thank you very much for joining us at the AGM this afternoon. Also, just before we get underway, we're looking for two people to volunteer to be tell us at the AGM and count votes. I have one volunteer. Thank you very much, James. Any other volunteers? Elizabeth, perfect. Thank you very much. So Elizabeth and James will be the tellers. During the voting, please, could you get up the front and then you can count your own vote? No, I'm okay here. We're okay. We'll go from here. Okay. Okay. Hi, everyone. So thanks for coming to the AGM. I can't promise it's going to be quite as fun to interact with. Thanks for coming. I'm also going to stand up next and welcome to people from other organizations. So, okay. I'm from ETAG in Canada. Tom and Ilta Vowd from Ireland. Tam did chose to join us from the European Association for Technology Cards Learning. So, she and I are just going to give some brief highlights of the past year. Do you want to go first, Sharon? Yeah, well, it's been a really action packed year for us over the last last year. And you can see some highlights here. We've had a lovely Brian, again, doing some graphics for it. Whereas, I suppose, there were a lot of highlights in terms of our journal, in terms of the OER conference, and in terms of this conference as well, 25th year, there's been a lot of work by all the people in the committee. And, yeah, it's just been almost too much this year. And we are a bit short of time. So, Martin, is there anything else you want to highlight? Just say I've gone wrong already. I'm going to ask for apologies and proxy votes. So, do you have those? Yeah, six proxy votes. So, just on my highlights here, I think Mark's kind of the end of the transition period for all of us, which Mara and the trustee are very skillfully negotiated. They're particularly moving to be a distributed organization. It's kind of very important for Alts. And the structure we have now kind of points towards longer-term stability, I think. So, I think it's important for any modern organization to always reflect on its practices. And Alts kind of exemplifies that. I also have to say, as the OER guy, I kind of, the OER conference, the one in Bristol this year, and every year is kind of a real highlight for me. I think it's become a real international fixture. And I think that's really moved on over the past few years. Okay, so on to the business. So, approval of the minutes of the last annual general meeting held in Liverpool on 6th September 2017. There's an accurate record of the meeting. We'll need a proposer and a seconder. Peter and then I need a seconder. James. So, those are approved as an accurate record of the meeting. Thank you. We don't have any matters arising. Are there any matters arising? And what's the base? No matters arising. Thank you. So, we zipped through that. Good. So, thank you. We're back on time. That's the way to do it. So, moving on to the annual report and accounts, I'm very pleased to hand over to Daniel for this part. Thank you. So, welcome to this meeting. Thank you for attending. My name is Daniel Clark. I'm the honorary treasurer of OLD. And it's my privilege to present to you the annual report and accounts. This is a really important part of our governance and our commitment to openness that we are transparent with you about the resources that we get, membership fees and so on, and how we're using them. So, it is important that these are made available to you. And when I was looking at them and reviewing them, I was thinking, I've just finished three years as treasurer of OLD. And as Martin said, in that time, we've seen some really big changes in how OLD runs and operates. So, we've moved to being an independent organization, a charitable incorporated organization, which means the trustees are not personally liable, which is a huge relief to all of us. We've moved away from our partnership with Brooks to become a virtual organization and directly employing people. And we've deliberately kept a lot of that invisible to you, our members, because it shouldn't interrupt the way we sort of deliver on our strategy. But over time, this should make us a much more sort of agile organization and we're able to cope with what the future throws at us. Now, becoming an independent organization and employing people directly does bring a little bit of extra risk. And it makes it that much more important that we are financially stable and that we are, say, careful with our resources. So I'm glad to say in the current year, the year ended last January, we did record a small surplus of 24,000 pounds. So that's a good result, clearly being careful on that side. What we've actually done is decided to transfer a bit of that money to increase a reserve that we hold. So we have, the reserve is now standing at 160,000 pounds in our accounts. Now, that reserve doesn't have any legal effect. What it is, it's a sort of rainy day fund. It's a marker to us as trustees, to you as members, that the money is set aside for emergencies. It's been calculated as six months of operating expenditure of alt. So the idea is that if there was a absolute catastrophe, every bit of income dried up, alt could run for six months, which would at least bias some breathing space. Now, that's not something we expect to happen. This is just us trying to be prudent. It is in line with best practice in the charity sector. So that's something that you'll see going through the accounts is a slight increase in that reserve. The other thing I'd like to draw your attention to and I hope will be of assurance to you as our members and stakeholders is that we have had, as usual, an independent audit of our accounts. So auditors who are not connected with us, who are professionals have come in, reviewed our accounts, our financial record keeping, signed off their audit report, which is quite lengthy, but what it amounts to is that they look at whether there is anything in the accounts that they could consider to be misleading or misstated and basically they're saying they are happy that the accounts are true and fair stated. So hopefully that's something that provides assurance to you that what we're presenting here is correct. And the only other thing I wanted to mention, or reflect on really, is that if you look through the accounts, sometimes there's an impression that it feels like a very large organisation with a lot of reach and big staff and offices everywhere and stuff like that. You look at these and our total turnover is 485,000 a year, which in the scheme of things is not vast. And the fact that on that level of resource so much is accomplished really is testament to the amount of time and energy and effort that people put in. And I think that, again, that's just something worth reflecting on as we look through these. So that was everything I had to say about presenting the accounts to you, but I'm very happy to take any questions. Apologies to Bella, who requested that I present the accounts through the medium of interpreted dance. But having considered that carefully, I thought perhaps it might go a bit wrong. Sorry, Bella. Next year maybe. Okay, so I'm going to propose a resolution that the annual Port and Accounts be adopted. I need a proposer and a seconder for that. Proposer and seconder, Nick. Do we have it? Okay. If you are entitled to vote, you should have a voting card. And I think Daniel will now ask first for votes for, then against and then abstentions and will also count proxy votes. So please keep your hand in the air until you've actually voted and be counted. Okay, so the resolution is that the annual Port and Accounts be adopted. Those in favour? Keep your hands up, please. Are we having a recount? 43. Those against? And abstentions. Thank you. Thank you, Daniel. I just want to say, every year I'm very thankful that we have Daniel as a trustee because this stuff is beyond me. So it's someone I can really trust who is doing this. Thank you very much, Daniel. The next part of this is to just approve the appointment of the auditors for next year's accounts. So I need a proposer and a seconder to appoint David Cadwalador and co-accountants for next year's. Proposer, James and Elizabeth. I think we can vote on this again. We don't have to vote. They're approved. So that brings us on to award of honorary life membership. I chaired the panel for this. I want to say that the person who's about to get it, I think we do a kind of Oscars thing, don't be worried. Don't reveal who it is. So the person who's the winner, it was a unanimous decision to give this person life membership. They've been a stalwart member of the all community throughout their career. I think they've given a lot to the UK sector in particular. I'm going to let Sheila say a few words because she is better placed. I think I've been really lucky in my career that I've worked with and continue to work with a number of very inspiring women, many of whom are in the room today. And I think I'm really excited about this award because the recipient of this honorary award, it's the highest honor that we give and it's a recognition of a very significant contribution to the organization by an individual. And I think this year's individual, she's played a role in ALT, I think probably since its outset. She's been a trustee. She's been a vice chair, a chair. She's also hosted a conference. And even when she stepped back from her role in government, she still was a really active part of the community. And she's done many, many things, including setting up the ALT Scotland group. I think in everything she does, she brings grace, intelligence, criticality, and her scholarly practice. And most of all, most important for me, her sense of fun and laughter. And I can honestly say, I don't think I've ever laughed as much in my life as when I've been working with this person, even at times when our laughter was tinged maybe with a bit of hysteria. But I feel so privileged to have worked alongside her for the past five years. And I'm still in denial that this person has taken early retirement. I'm still hoping that she's just going to walk back in from holiday next week. But at this point, I would just like to say it just gives me a huge pleasure to present this year's honorary life membership to Linda Kreener. Thank you everyone for this. I'm quite overwhelmed really and feel very, very honoured to receive this. Thank you to all the ALT trustees and all fellow members for this award. I do think something that's given to you by your peers is one of the most meaningful awards that you can receive in your career. And I'm really grateful to get this. Now, ALT has certainly been very dear to my heart throughout my career. I actually started my career in learning technology in January 1993. So it was the first, it's the same year as ALT was established. So it's been there all along and I have to say that any involvement in time that I've given to ALT I've had back tenfold. In terms of professional networks, deepening understanding of the field and most importantly, making friends. Friendship and fun, I think we've had a lot of that and there's been a lot of that in this year's conference as well. So it's been a privilege to be involved in ALT and to have played a small part in its development over the years. I'm very pleased as well that ALT Scotland is now a thriving part of the ALT family and that membership is growing year on year. So thanks again to everyone. I hope to keep in touch and here's to the next 25 years. Thank you. Thanks Linda. So we've made some changes to the constitution this year for ALT which Sheila and Mara are going to find you through now. Sheila would you like to say a few words maybe just in general and I can maybe help talk through the technicalities? Absolutely. So as Daniel and Martin have both alluded to it's been the last couple of years there's been quite a lot of changes to the organisation particularly around our new strategy which we launched last year and this year by becoming a virtual organisation and moving away from books. At the same time as doing that we have felt that actually we needed to maybe make some changes to our governance structures to support the organisation better and obviously we've changed our charitable status as well. So what we want to do is take you through some of the proposed changes and the reason we're doing this is really for the stability of the organisation and thinking towards the next 25 years and also as it says in the slide there it's really bringing us in line with best practice for the charity commission as well so we really feel this is timely and necessary for the future development of the organisation and association. Anything you'd like to add at that point, Marin? No, I think we can probably jump right in and just go through the key points. As Sheila was saying there are a number of changes to be proposed and the first one is regarding how we appoint roles of the president, the chair and the vice chair and alt so as many of you will be familiar currently and for the past this has been an annually rotating role and I think we've identified that while we've been extremely fortunate as a professional body to have very able and engaged trustees that make the life of staff like myself really easy and straightforward it is a huge challenge to find really well informed, good quality trustees on an annual basis to take the most responsible role in our organisation and it also means that we as staff provide much greater continuity and as we all think that the membership should have the greatest perspective on what we do from a strategic perspective I really welcome this proposal to extend the term of these most important trustee roles the most active, the most responsible for the governance to the charity commission as well to bring them in line with the same terms of service that all the other trustees have it is quite unusual to have the chair of an organisation rotate annually and over the last six years as CEO I've been very fortunate to have six wonderful chairs to work with but we do only work together for 12 months before the next one arrives so this makes great practical sense and does minimise our risk and similarly as we are quite a streamlined small organisation and we want to use the resources as best we can and we've also proposed that the maximum number of trustees overall goes from 13 to 10 which will still give us enough breadth to have the governance that we really need but doesn't mean that we have to unnecessarily have larger committees that we really need to so I think those are the specific changes to the boards and the roles and we're moving on now to explain regarding how trustees are elected and appointed so as you are familiar as members at the moment all trustees are elected openly anyone who is a member can express an interest in roles but we don't advertise as other charities do specific job descriptions for let's say being a treasurer and in Daniel we actually have the first treasurer who has an accountancy background and is fully qualified to advise us financially so we want to catch up with what other charities like the Wikimedia Foundation for example are doing and we want to make the recruitment of the trustees more transparent so it's very clear what you volunteer to do because it is a role of great responsibility so instead of appointing all trustees in the same manner we propose that half of all trustees will still be elected openly and members can express an interest and they will be the same as they are now but that they are specific roles including the chair, the treasurer and the vice chair who will recruit with job descriptions and that instead of having open elections which can sometimes lead to those who are most popular or well known voices being elected we will give the existing board the final say in their appointment again this is probably quite commonplace in most charities but a big step for us and a big change so I'm just going to pause there because I think Sheila we might want to pause for questions briefly in case anybody has questions on these two points absolutely so if you do have questions please raise your hand or let us know there doesn't seem to be any questions right now so should we move on? I think there's two more changes that we've had a lot of feedback on from membership in the last years the organisation has grown and one of the areas it's grown specifically over the last few years is member groups when I joined ALT ten years ago ALT Scotland was kind of the member group and the M25 group wasn't yet an ALT group but now we have member groups all across the UK and our governance hasn't really caught up with that our governance doesn't provide a direct avenue for those member groups from Northern Ireland from Wales from all parts of the UK and different parts of the country to have a voice directly in the governance so the idea is that we'll make an overarching committee which is really going to be a new forum for member groups to talk to each other and with each other and have more direct opportunity to collaborate alongside the conference committees alongside the journal editors the blog editors and all other groups involved in the governance of ALT and that the Assembly will be chaired by the President now as you can imagine I actually tried to make a slide for you of what our current structure looks like and I ended up having 109 arrows and I gave up if I'm honest with you because I thought no one will believe that this is how ALT is currently organised and how many different indirect reporting lines and direct responsibilities there are so this is why we're proposing this constitutional change today but there'll be a transition period until the constitution comes fully into effect which is at the next AGM so in 12 months and we want to work with all of our existing member groups to get it right to make this transition and here you can see what we currently think is going to be a blueprint for the new ALT assembly so that the existing groups will still operate just as they do now special interest groups member groups steering groups for the journal conference committees and there might be other groups like C-mold lead assessors which are not a formal group right now but that we will work together as a community to get that right because there's many people three and a half thousand or thereabouts involved in ALT and we want to make sure as many of them have a voice so just to maybe conclude and Maechila might have more things to add here is how we propose to put this into practice the trustees are putting it to the vote today to ask you to approve these new changes to the constitutions which will come into effect in 12 months time at the next AGM and that's why we have a secondary resolution for the three trustees where previously there would have been the rotation of roles to retain their positions for 12 months to give us some stability until we have the new election processes and the ALT assembly in place and that we will work together as a community to put the ALT assembly into place over the next 12 months so that our governance as Sheila said will hopefully be more stable in terms of accountability and management day to day but will also I think importantly give a greater voice to our membership all across the country and also internationally so I hope Sheila that's covered some of the technical parts did you want to add anything? Not really I think you've covered it very well and just I suppose just to say that this is not a paragraph by Martin and I we are going to retire this is just a temporary... President for life I'm not so sure about him again just to reiterate that this is really you can see this is almost the final part of a jigsaw that's been coming together over the last couple of years around the future of the organisation so yeah that's all I would really add to that yeah has anyone got any questions though because there's quite a lot of information to take in but obviously Martin has explained it beautifully and succinctly for everyone yeah a proposal thank you Sarah the seconder and then we need to vote so we've got our tellers so vote 4 I can't read it from here the constitution attached and this resolution be adopted as the constitution and CEO in substitution 4 at the exclusion of the existing constitution as of 4th September 2019 so 4, 43 and we add the 6 proxy votes in against 0 and the extensions thank you so that's passed so just to explain to you the legal advice was very clear that we had to have a secondary motion in order to make this possible for us to have the constitution adopted which you've just passed which is that the following trustees retain their roles with Susheela, Nicola and Daniel we're going to act as chair vice chair and treasurer respectively and that will then be in accordance with the new institution for the next 12 months so we're going to need to do the same on that as well proposal seconder Steven and tellers again you don't get to sit down much so voting for these trustees keep their roles against 0, extensions thank you so that's recorded thank you that's quite a big moment, thank you everyone we move on to chairs award which is the number of the chair our first chairs award over to you so it's another first for the conference so I know we're having another first tonight in terms of awards with the research awards as part of our learning technologies award but this is an award that we have talked about for a while about maybe having another award for someone who doesn't maybe fit into the learning technologists award or maybe hasn't quite got the has had long enough to get a lifetime and honorary membership award but someone who's making a significant contribution to our community nonetheless and actually we were kind of spurred into action by this by by yourselves by our community and I think the application that we received actually made my decision very very easy about this and I think the person who's getting this is normally behind the scenes of many things and particularly at the conference and he makes sure that everything goes smoothly and that he meets our strategic objectives particularly around openness and not only does he provide almost single-handedly the live streaming for conferences he's also developed a new platform for an open source submission platform for the conference and he shares that with the community as well probably giving this away if you haven't guessed who it is already but I think the work that this person does in terms of openness and particularly things like the tags explorer it's not just the work he does for all it's not just his job which he does like all our staff members incredibly well and goes above and beyond what anyone would expect of him all the time but he shares back wider to the community and I think in particular the work that he did in tags explorer it allowed so many communities a view on their interactions that there was never possible before and that continues to be used and he continues to develop that and I think he's just such a great model a role model for our community about being you know that person Donna was talking about opening a window into your practice I think this person has opened all the doors and all the windows and he's let so many people in and let people then open their own doors into their practice as well so I'm again really really delighted to award Martin Hoxie with the inaugural Cheers Award It's a long walk from back there Thank you very much now I have a job I can't explain to my parents this is going well it would have been easier if you just gave me a chair but anyway I've been very fortunate to work with a number of old members in my career including Linda Craner who was one of the first people I worked with higher education institution so it's I think very fitting that Linda has been awarded today as well my first old conference was actually 2009 at this very venue and it was a great opportunity to see so many people I'd heard about and read about face to face and the passion, the care and thought that I saw from a wide range of presentations has really informed me about this day so it's really old members that have created me so it's your fault Thanks Martin so it's now my role to say thank you to members and trustees who are coming to the service and we have some presents good or we get to give presents out so first of all thanks to members German editor Amanda Jeffries is Amanda here hey come down Amanda 3% have been at nearly 40% over the last several years and yes can I just reiterate what Martin said it's always been a very friendly caring and compassionate place to meet and share practice and it's been a privilege to make it part of my professional life so thank you very much and I'm sure there are lots of other people who will be able to carry on the good work that we're doing so thank you Also say thank you to the blog editor Santano Versante hello, oh good thank you for your work trustees who are coming into the term Neil Morris trustee and chair of the editorial board I think Neil's not here is he Neil did some sterling work particularly stirring the journal through a tricky period our very own James Clay trustee and former chair of the FE committee my favourite proposer so we have a gift for you my first my first alt was 2003 in Sheffield and I hated it I'm glad things have changed but what I would say is when I joined the trustees as I was elected but I was also chair of the FE committee I think over the last six years we have seen FE become much more engaged and interacting with alt and I'm really pleased to see that change so I feel like I've had a bit of an impact so but I think we're going to do good and better things and finally Shirley Evans trustee and honor secretary she might be watching thank you Shirley which brings us on to the last thing which is also another first is that right, so many firsts so this year we're having a seamal ceremony so the closing highlight of the year is ADM all members who have achieved or renewed the seamal accreditation so if you're one of those people please come up okay so I'm going to okay so we have Lorna Campbell Richard Beggs Vicki Dale Richard Clarkson Adam Else Sarah Knight Carl Luke Chrissie Naranze Ania Patel Amy Sampson Chris Sheridan Gemma Whitten wow it's the same page well and if I've missed anybody out please come down congratulations to you all well I'm just thrilled to have been part of the process and supported my reflected practice and it's a great honor to be the first senior certified member thank you okay and with that we officially close the ADM thank you everyone and see you next year