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.

Activities

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 by the COVID-19 pandemic, BAA is arranging a series of webcasts to replace their regular monthly symposium.

The Webinars, are held using Zoom, and consist of half an hour of social interaction, followed by a single presentation of about an hour, and a Q&A session. The sessions are recorded with subsequent publication on YouTube. Some webinars are 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.

No.	Date	Presenter(s)	Title
1	Apr 9th 2020	Richard Park, Dyalog	Molecular Dynamics-in-APL
2	Apr 23rd 2020	MJH Software Services	Introducing qWC Alpha 0.4
3	May 7th 2020	Adám Brudzewsky, Dyalog	Meet the new APL Wiki
4	May 21st 2020	Phil Last	Acre source-code manager update
5	Jun 4th 2020	Paul Grosvenor	British APL Association AGM
6	Jun 18th 2020	Bob Armstrong	CoSy : The Shortest Path from the Chip to the Math
7	Jul 2nd 2020	Adám Brudzewsky	aplcart.info turns 1
summer break
8	Aug 13th 2020	John Jacob	BAA websites: New features
		Ellis Morgan	An APL recreation
9	Aug 27th 2020	Open Session
10	Sep 10th 2020	Open session
11	Sep 24th 2020	Ray Cannon	Using SVG from Dyalog APL for animated visualisation
12	Oct 8th 2020	Ray Polivka	Seats in the House of Representatives
13	Oct 22nd 2020	Open Session
14	Nov 5th 2020	Open session

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.

External links

• BAA Website

• BAA London Google Group announces upcoming symposiums and other events.

• Vector, The BAA's Journal has a significant archive relevant for learning and understanding APL and related languages today

• The Vector archives