sdo@u1100a.UUCP (Scott Orshan) (02/27/85)
I was a bit upset by the plenary (opening) talks each day at
Uniforum. Each speaker sounded like he was selling something.
(Yes, "he" - all the plenary speakers were white males.)
I think of a plenary talk as a speech on a topic of interest
to most people attending the conference. All the talks
seemed to be thinly disguised efforts to plug a product or
service of the speaker's company. It's perfectly alright to
have these talks at this conference - in fact, that's the point -
but not when there is a captive audience that has no idea of
the topic of the talk.
What I expected to hear were talks on the state of the art of the
UNIX system, proposed new architectures and applications, and
general talks on "the growing impact of UNIX in Office Systems,
Personal Computers, Technical (Engineering/Programming), and
Market Trends." [from the Uniforum Conference Program]
Instead, I heard about IBM, AT&T, and SUN products, and
AT&T services. These are not "The Worlds of UNIX" as the
conference theme was stated, but the worlds of those companies
whose speakers spoke.
I'd like to hear if others feel the same way, and maybe persuade
the organizers of next year's conference to request more
appropriate topics for these talks. Also, how about some
equal opportunity for the job of Plenary Speaker?
--
Scott Orshan
Bell Labs Piscataway
201-981-3064
{pyuxww,ihnp4,bellcore}!u1100a!sdogwyn@brl-tgr.ARPA (Doug Gwyn <gwyn>) (03/01/85)
> I was a bit upset by the plenary (opening) talks each day at > Uniforum. Each speaker sounded like he was selling something. I agree. I too found the "Here's how IBM is organized internally" keynote speech to be totally inappropriate and of no real use even to the business-oriented audience. They should bring in software developers instead of corporate executives.
davest@daemon.UUCP (Dave Stewart) (03/02/85)
In article <788@u1100a.UUCP> sdo@u1100a.UUCP (Scott Orshan) writes: >I was a bit upset by the plenary (opening) talks each day at >Uniforum. Each speaker sounded like he was selling something. > ... >What I expected to hear were talks on the state of the art of the >UNIX system, proposed new architectures and applications, and ... Uniforum is always the market-oriented "trade show" and the Usenix conference is the technical conference. Although I am surprised that the Uniforum plenary sessions were so company-specific, I am not surprised that they dealt with strictly marketing issues as opposed to rising to the level of technical issues. Our group decided a year ago at Washington not to send people to Uniforum any more because of this orientation and we are software engineers, not marketeers. Given the usual audience at Uniforum, most people probably thought those talks were fantastic ... -- David C. Stewart uucp: tektronix!davest Small Systems Support Group csnet: davest@TEKTRONIX Tektronix, Inc. phone: (503) 627-5418
henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (03/02/85)
I wasn't at the Uniforum plenary sessions, but I can well believe that
much of the material was thinly-disguised plugs for the speakers'
products. What else did you expect at /vendor/show, er excuse me
/usr/group? The whole Dallas Uniforum program reeked of utter and
total domination by marketing people, and you know what *that* means.
I don't think it is physically impossible to combine a business
orientation with significant content, which is what you were seeking.
I speculate that it could be done, if the program organizers had
loud voices, strong opinions, and a firm determination to do things
that way. In other words, deliberate intent to give the attendees
their money's worth. So far, Uniforum seems weak on this.
One useful criterion would be the rule Usenix was pushing a few years
ago: "real content" means the sort of information that your closest
competitor would love to have. There is a certain amount of this at
Usenix, but very little at Uniforum as yet.
--
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henrysteveg@hammer.UUCP (Steve Glaser) (03/02/85)
ek. (The January 86 meetings are scheduled for different citys at different times.) Uniforum is a conference put on by /usr/group and seems to be evolving towards a trade show sort of conference. My guess is that by typical trade show standards, the papers at Uniforum were above average. The problem is that many engineers don't go to trade shows (or if they do, they ignore the sessions). Try going to COMDEX sometime. The USENIX Association has been trying to stay in the technical realm. Papers attempting to push a particular product are discouraged by both the program committe and the membership (some may sneak in anyway - it's hard to control what somebody says after you give them get the podium). On the whole, the quality of papers at Usenix is improving. For the Portland conference, selected papers will be reviewd by Software Practice and Experience for a special edition. Steve Glaser P.S. Dates for USENIX/Portland are June 11-14, 1985. 1-2 page abstracts are due March 18th (yes that's right, March 18th). You can mail abstracts to ucbvax!portland. Further details are available from the USENIX Conference Office P.O. Box 385 Sunset Beach CA 90742 (phone 213-592-3243 or 213-592-1381). A pre-registration packet will be mailed out in early April.
dan@petrus.UUCP (03/04/85)
/usr/group seems to be reasonably honest about being a trade association rather than club for unix hacks.