The role of the amenities officer as defined in the May 2015 constitution are:
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Be responsible for the management of the Society room, under the guidance of the Chairperson.
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Be responsible for the management of the Society’s equipment, including but not limited to computers, consoles and games.
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Be responsible for the management of the Society’s library.
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Prepare a handbook for their successor.
As the amenities officer of DUCSS it is your responsibility to maintain the society room. The room can get very messy and it is important that you make sure people throw their rubbish in the bins. The cleaners do clean the room but it is totally not fair to leave the room in a mess for them. They are also in a rush in the mornings so it is likely they will miss things.
The society room has a nice collection of books ranging from computer science to modern fiction. It is your role to keep track of who takes books out of the room and to contact them if they have had a book out for too long. There is currently an online system for reserving books but it is cumbersome to use. It would be nice if this system could be improved. One thing that was suggested was hooking up a Raspberry Pi or an Arduino in the room so people could scan books as they take them out.
The room currently has three sofa's, 4 PC's, a TV and several games consoles. The amenities officer is responsible for ensuring that these work and to source replacements in the event that they fail.
As a member of the committee you should take an active role in the society by attending and contributing to the weekly meetings. You should also be constantly on the lookout for opportunities to organise events and for people who would be interested in working with DUCSS. Examples of this would be meeting people who would be interested in talking to our members or who would be interested in sponsoring an event throughout the year.
I was amenities officer for two years. During that time the room had a complete makeover. We removed the microwave, which had never been cleaned and just made the room smell awful. We removed the fridge, which only heated up the room and smelt of mould. We also reorganised the layout of the room so our members had more room to sit down and relax.
During my time as amenities officer I got a new sofa for the room, purchased and donated books, lent my whiteboards and Chromecast to the room, built the library section of the website, catalogued all the books and got the carpet fixed (which eventually led onto the room being painted).
As a member of the committee I helped organise events. Over the past two years I set up and ran the annual table quiz, organised movie showings, organised tech speakers, organised and ran a hackathon with SpunOut.ie and Guidewire Software.
My suggestions for future amenities officers would be; to organise the library system so it's more transparent, get the two new sofa's that we had planned to buy, buy a real whiteboard for the room (you would be surprised how handy these get from 3rd year onwards), throw away the out-dated Edge magazines (no one reads them but I wasn't allowed throw them out), get rid of some of the Java books that seem to spawn in the room, the library is lacking in Javascript and Python books so a few new books would be nice. Most importantly though, enjoy your time on committee.
The past two years were the best two years of my life. Being a part of DUCSS can be incredibly rewarding if you just put the time and effort into it. 💖