How sad

 Membership Number: 10511

Dear Anthony,

Firstly, I am Gerald Stein the newly elected Outreach Director for the PESGB.

I am writing to all of the special interest group members on a very important issue.

As a charity the PESGB has a governing document stating what we can and can’t do. A summary of this is the Charitable Objects and it says we ‘promote for the public benefit, education in the scientific and technical aspects of petroleum exploration’.

This can be very limiting. When the office team call up about booking venues they get an immediate NO, as people do not want anything to do with petroleum!

Universities that have received grants and bursaries for students from PESGB in the past have asked to cut contact, as their students do not want their university involved with an organisation with petroleum in the name.  However misguided you feel this approach is, it does limit what the a society can do and by broadening the charitable objects and changing the name, this will allow PESGB to carry on the conversation with these institutions.

To make the change we have to pass two separate resolutions to satisfy the Charity Commission, the first is to change the charitable objects, followed by changing the name. 

The vote will open on the 7th Feb.

To pass this special resolution that will change the PESGB’s charitable objects, we must secure a majority of 75% of the membership vote in favour of the change. Although this has been achieved in the indicative vote, we must inform you that only 6% of the membership took part in the vote. We need to increase the number of members voting so that we can be reassured that this is what our members really want.

Please vote on this crucial issue!

Kind regards,

Dr. Gerald Stein

Chair - Machine Learning SIG