Looking Back at 2022/23

- Date Posted: Jul 3, 2023

Hello everyone!

Firstly, to almost all CSS members, congratulations, you’ve survived a year of university. 🎉 It’s been a busy year for me, for CSS and I’m sure lots of you too. In true CSS style, I’m going to kick off with a fun graph:

Here is the number of members we have had this year, rocketing up during fresher’s week and then climbing to reach an all-time high of 409 members of CSS. Seeing the number of people coming to board games nights, our trip to the National Museum of Computing, pub nights and the CSS Ball, it’s really inspiring to have so many of us in the community. In fact, with such a great growing community, we’ve run even more events than ever before! Whether it’s regular classics like the Hallowe’en Quiz and the Christmas Meal or new workshops or new trips such as to The National Museum of Computing, there’s been something for everyone.

My personal favourite event of the last year was our TeX Talks - a series of talks from academics, alumni and people from industry all about the cool aspects of tech! This was an idea I had a while ago and, after the usual panicking trying to find speakers and then having too many to fit in, it all came together. If you missed it, you can look back at the recording on YouTube although you might want to skip the first 12 minutes of faffing around :D You won’t be able to share in the free pizza but you will get to listen in to some of the awesome talks and find out about a range of tech topics. To me, this is one of the best things we get to do as CSS - explore outside of the CS course and broaden our horizons (all with free pizza of course).

I can’t talk about great events of the year, however, without mentioning our annual CSS Ball <3 It’s the one night in the year when lots of CSS members come together dressed in their best clothes to celebrate the time we’ve had. It’s always a great night and this year was no different. This time around we had a live band blasting out tunes onto the dance floor, a photobooth, photographer and a beautiful venue. I hope that, like me, everyone who came along has fond memories of a fabulous night out.

But, that was last year, what about the year to come? Last month, we hosted our AGM, the annual meeting in which we elect our new committee and boy, you’ve got some marvellous people organising CSS in the year to come. If you see any of this lot around next year, make sure to say hi! You can check out all of the new committee on our /committee page and read about their different roles. So, final thing to say - thank you! CSS has been so awesome this year and all the years I’ve been at UoB and it’s down to you, all the different members over that time who have made it so. Whether you were on the committee, helped run an event, helped clear up the mess in the atrium after a board games night or just came along to an event and smiled, you’ve made countless people’s time at university better. And that’s what CSS is all about and I’m certain it always will be in the years to come.

Thanks for a great time,

Jacob

CSS President 2022-23