Issue 63 Nov 2014
MONITOR
the newsletter of The Worshipful Company of Information Technologists
MASTER’S LETTER
A
s I write this, it is four weeks to the day since I was installed as your 28th Master and
what a busy 4 weeks they have been. My Installation Service, with the music chosen
by my wife and an excellent sermon by our Honorary Chaplain, Martin Dudley, was
a great start. As I am also celebrating a major birthday about this time, we invited over 20
family and friends to the Installation Service & Dinner, which everyone enjoyed immensely.
With over 210 attending the Installation Dinner, the Hall team did their usual excellent job
and everything worked like clockwork, which is no mean feat for such a large event.
Having been our Company’s representative on the Financial Services Group (FSG) of Livery
Companies for the past 3 years, I have had the opportunity to meet quite a number of
upcoming Masters from some of the other FSG companies, so I was very honoured to be
invited to four other Installation Dinners within days of my own Installation. All the other
Masters & Wardens whom I have met at these events hold our Company in very high esteem.
The variety of other events that I have attended has ranged from a Remembrance Service at
St. Pauls Cathedral, taking part in the Lord Mayor’s Show (which fortunately was dry this
year), to attending an evening of Poetry & Prose reading by students from Kensington
Schools. 46F (Kensington) Squadron Air Training Corps, our affiliated Cadets, who provide
such an excellent Carpet Guard at many formal dinners, were there and gave a very good
reading, plus their Corps of Drums & Bugler gave a very moving “Sunset Ceremony” at the
end, which all the attendees thought was excellent and it all made me very proud of our
affiliation with 46F (Kensington) Squadron.
Nicholas Birtles
Inside this issue:
Master’s Letter
1
Sir Tim
Berners-Lee
3
Royal Signals
4
WCIT Enterprise
Awards 2014
5
List of upcoming
WCIT winter events
6
WCIT Pro-Bono &
Projects Panel
latest
9
Installation Dinner
Goldsmiths’ Hall
10-11
WCIT Charity latest
news on donations
12-15
LBTS & HA latest
16-17
WCIT History &
Archives
18
I have also had the pleasure of attending a number of Panel & Committee meetings so far, as
I plan to try to attend at least one meeting for all our Panels & Committees during my year.
(Photo: Gerald Sharp)
The enthusiasm & energy that you our members put into these is quite remarkable and it is
hard to pick a single event, but I was particularly impressed by the recent IT4Arts workshop,
which show-cased some tremendous user case studies using new cloud-based “Freemium” SaaS products to
provide the complete marketing for a small arts organisation, to the use of new energy sources to enable a very low
cost and carbon-neutral theatre environment and some very interesting research on the experiences of Arts
organisations implementing new digital strategies. This workshop was attended by over 50 major Arts organisation
staff, who were all very impressed by the very good work that our Arts Panel puts into organising these events, so
congratulations again to WCIT Liveryman, Martin Black, and his team, who often keep their light under a bushel!
The theme for my Master’s Year is IMPACT 2020, looking at the impact that all the new technologies, including
Cloud, SaaS, Smartphones, Tablets, Big Data and Social Media, is having, not just for our Industry, but for our
customers, users and society in general. By the time you read this edition
of Monitor, we will have held my first Business Luncheon on the 19th
November at which my guest speaker is Steve Garnett, EMEA Chairman
of Salesforce.com, one of earliest pioneers and the leading SaaS
provider, which promises to be a very interesting speech. If you missed
this Business Luncheon, my guest at the next on 11th February is Richard
Holway MBE, Chairman of Tech Market View and well-known IT
Industry Analyst, which should be equally interesting.
Finally, can I also strongly recommend that you join us for our Carol
Concert on Friday, 12th December at the Priory Church of St.
Bartholomew the Great, which should be another great occasion, with
some more very interesting music. Which is a good segue way for me to
wish you an early Happy Christmas & very prosperous New Year.