BAA

The British APL Association (BAA; infrequently BAPLA) is a user group founded in 1984 in England to promote APL, and the publisher of Vector journal. It is funded by its sustaining members, which include corporate users and the APL vendors APL2000, Dyalog Ltd., Kx Systems, and MicroAPL.

The BAA was a Specialist Group of the British Computer Society from its early years (possibly beginning after APL86 ) until it left in response to increasing requirements made by the BCS in 2008.

Symposium
From 2008 and until the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the BAA London group arranged a monthly open-for-all meet-up, called the symposium, at the The Hoop and Grapes pub on Farringdon Street in London. No sign-up was required.

Vector journal
Vector, the journal of the BAA, began publication in 1984, and gradually took the place of APL Quote Quad as the de-facto leading publishing channel for APL content. The journal featured submitted articles on array programming including J and K, as well as news from APL and other array language vendors. Beginning in 2005, with volume 21 issue 4, the journal was issued online as well as in print, and some prior articles have also been made available online. It was published quarterly until 2004, when late and sometimes skipped issues began to interrupt its formerly regular schedule. Releases slowed more significantly after 2008, and in 2016, following the completion of volume 26, the journal moved entirely to online publishing. So far a single issue has been published this way, in 2019.

BAPLA 09
The British APL Association held a 2-day conference, BAPLA 09, on June 8th & 9th 2009 at DeVere Hotel, Wokefield Park, near Reading, UK

Webinar
In response to the restrictions imposed during 2020 by the COVID-19 pandemic, BAA has arranged a series of webcasts to replace their regular monthly symposium. The series proved popular, and was continued throughout 2021 and into 2022. Initially, each event consisted of half an hour of social interaction, followed by a single presentation of about an hour, and a Q&A session, though some webinars were so-called open sessions which are more similar to the monthly symposium, in being informal meetings where APLers discuss and present whatever they feel like, with no particular subject decided on beforehand. Eventually, the series evolved so that most meetings were of this general meetup nature, with only a minority of events having an agenda. Participants are still encouraged to present or raise any subject, and can request in advance that an episode is set aside for such.

The events are held at 16:00 UK time, every other Thursday on even-numbered ISO weeks. The current week number can easily be determined using Dyalog APL:  gives   this week.

BAA webinars are held using Zoom:


 * Meeting ID: 858 532 665
 * Passcode: The result of evaluated as APL

Iverson Centenary
On 17 December 2020, a special webinar was arranged to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ken Iverson. Around 200 attendees from around the world attended as the panel consisting of Roger Hui, Leslie Goldsmith, Rebecca Kelly (of KX), Devon McCormick, Morten Kromberg, Simon Garland, and Stephen Taylor reflected on their experiences of working with and learning from Iverson. The legacy of Iverson Notation for APL, J, Q and other languages was discussed, together with the future of Iversonian notations.

APL logo
After a consensus at the September 9th 2021 webinar, BAA headed an effort to adopt a universal vendor-agnostic logo for APL. This work concluded at the 2022-05-19 webinar.

Organisation
The BAA is administered by a committee of officers elected by ballot of Association members at the Annual General Meeting. Working groups are also established in areas such as activity planning and journal production. Offers of assistance and involvement with any Association matters are always welcomed.

Funding for the BAA comes entirely from the sustaining members. In many cases, these sustaining members also provide manpower and administrative assistance to the association at their own cost.

The current chairman is Paul Grosvenor.