The SA Branch of the Statistical Society of Australia held its branch meeting and AGM on March 25 2020. Outgoing President Shahid Ullah presented the annual report for 2019-20 calendar year. Murthy Mittinty was elected as President for the new council, along with Vice President Barbara Toson. Aarti Gulyani remains as Secretary, Paul Sutcliff as Treasurer and Wendy Li as the Young Statistician representative. Other council members elected were existing members Kylie Lange, Helena Oakley and Lan Kelly.

Shahid Ullah presented the results of an online survey of members’ and non-members’ feedback about past and future  activities such as meetings, workshops, networking and memberships. The survey was conducted during the month of March before the AGM via an email to everyone on the SA Branch mailing list. Of 24 responses, 71% of respondents were full members and 28% of these had been for more than 10 years. 12.5% were not current members but had been in the past and 8.3% had never been members. 67% of respondents were employed at a university or academic institution, while 21% were employed outside these areas. The remainder were students or retired.

The primary reason for joining SSA was networking (74%,) followed by training events such as conferences/workshops/seminars (39%). 79% of respondents had attended some or all of the meetings in the past year, mainly because they were interested in the seminar content. The main reason for not attending the branch meeting was due to other commitments (76%).

Regarding future content of the meetings, applied statistics (83%) and data visualization (61%) were the most popular. And despite the survey having been designed before face to face meetings were cancelled due to COVID-19, 83% said they would consider attending meetings by Zoom!

Lan Kelly