CREG Newsletter – December 2011

[David Gibson]

CREG Newsletter – December 2011

We are writing to you to bring you up to date with news and events. You will probably have realised that we have not published a journal yet this year; the last one being issue 75, which was published in January 2011 (with a cover date of December 2010). We did, however, hold a successful symposium in April this year and you can find some of the presentations archived at http://bcra.org.uk/proc/

Plans for the CREG Journal (ISSN 1361-4800)

Faced with a decreasing supply of articles for publication and an ever-increasing reliance on a dwindling number of regular contributors, we adopted a policy, some time ago, of publishing only when we had amassed sufficient material. Whilst this may sound reasonable in theory, the consequence of having no publication deadline has resulted in a progressive slippage and ever more diminished enthusiasm. This is unsatisfactory to those who are prepared to make an effort to contribute and equally unsatisfactory to subscribers.

Consequently we are now intending to try to re-introduce firm publishing deadlines and to publish what is available at that time. This may result in some very thin journals, but it is hoped that its regular appearance will at least encourage contributors to make the often-considerable effort to provide articles.

We are planning to publish the next issue of the Journal in January 2012. Currently there is very little material ready for publication and we are extremely keen to have contributions from authors old and new. Please contact Rob Gill if you are able to provide any material for the next issue.

2012 Cave Technology Symposium

BCRA’s Cave Technology Symposium is scheduled for Saturday 14 April 2012 in the Mendips. The location will probably be the Hunters Lodge Inn, Priddy, but this has yet to be confirmed. You can expect presentations on topics such as cave surveying, electronics, computing, lighting, photography, cave radio, radio-location and other aspects of caving ‘technology’. It is intended that field trips and practical presentations will take place on the Sunday. The event will also coincide with the Cave Surveying Group’s spring field meeting. Contributions are invited on any aspect of caving technology in the form of short lectures, poster papers, or more informal practical sessions. Cave survey posters and cave photographs are particularly welcome for display.

The creg-announce Mailing List

From time to time we have used your email address to send out notices about CREG. We would like to ‘formalise’ this process by setting up an Internet Mailing List for CREG subscribers. We will use the list to make announcements about the publication date of the journal, and various associated matters. The list will be an ‘announcement’ list rather than a ‘discussion’ list. Therefore – if we have a valid email address for you – you will shortly receive an email introducing you to this list. You are under no obligation to subscribe but, if you wish to keep in touch with us, we recommend that you do subscribe. The list’s web page is http://list.bcra.org.uk .

Most of you will be familiar with the concept of an Internet Mailing List (or email ‘reflector’). It is a ‘formal’ method of posting messages to a group of subscribers. Its advantage, from our point of view, is that the subscribers can manage their own mailing details and we do not need to administer a manually-collected list of addresses. With that in mind, once we have set up the list we will no longer store your email address in our records but will, instead, rely on the address you have stored in the mailing list should we need to contact you.

You should not take the creation of the mailing list as any indication that the journal is ceasing production. However, it is probably inevitable that, as time goes on, there will be an increasing amount of activity in mailing lists, online forums and blogs which, for the most part, will be discussions of ongoing work and ideas rather than the presentation of finished ‘publishable’ works. CREG is run by volunteers, and its activities are governed by whatever those volunteers want to do. Increasingly, what people want to do is work online. For some time now, we have been posting short articles to the CREG forum here at http://bcra.org.uk/cregf/ and there is also, of course, the long- standing Speleonics mailing list http://caves.org/section/commelect/ In fact, we see these online forums as being a suitable source for journal articles so, if you have not taken a look before, please do come to the CREG forum and make a contribution!

Usage of the creg-announce list: We would like to see as many CREG subscribers as possible sign up to the creg-announce list and so, to try to encourage this, we will guarantee that you are not bombarded with trivial emails. The list is primarily intended for announcements by CREG staff, e.g. we will tell you when a journal is due to be published or when an online article has been posted somewhere. Messages from people other than CREG staff will be moderated. Short informative messages (e.g. directing readers to a discussion on the forum, or making a relevant request or announcement) will be accepted, but trivial chat will be rejected. Chat and discussion should take place here on the CREG forum or, if you prefer, on the Speleonics list.

Regards, the CREG Admin team:
Rob Gill, David Gibson, Chris Trayner, Mike Bedford, John Rabson