EBERARD@ADA20.ISI.EDU (Edward V. Berard) (08/23/87)
"Be careful about what you pray for, lest you receive it."
-- Old Chinese proverb
"May you live in interesting times."
-- Old Chinese curse
"'The time has come,' the Walrus said, 'to talk of many things...'"
-- Lewis Carroll
From where I sit, the Ada world seems to be going through some very
explosive growth. The rapidly escalating demand for the technology in
the U.S., Canada, Europe, and elsewhere will force the Ada community,
as a whole, to re-evaluate our current practices. If we plan it well,
the transition from "two hundred people in a hotel room planning the
future" to "thousands of people discussing the state-of-the-art in
Ada technology" can be made almost tolerable.
To be sure, the large changes coming up in the next two years will
disturb some of "the old guard," but that is unavoidable. It is ironic
that many in the Ada community who have had to fight unreasonable
resistance to new technology will now find themselves fighting
resistance to change from *within* the Ada community.
One of the first places where we will probably notice an ever
increasing pressure for change is in our "professional" societies and
organizations. Specifically, I am referring to organizations such as
SIGAda, Ada JUG, Ada UK, Ada in Sweden, and Ada Europe. The primary
source of the pressure for change will be the large influx of new
people, and with them, new problems, ideas, needs, and wants.
Consider, for example, SIGAda. As part of the Association for
Computing Machinery (ACM), the Special Interest Group on Ada has an
almost "academic" image. One might question how such an organization
might deal with the increasingly practical concerns of a rapidly
changing Ada community. For example, to avoid concurrent sessions
during the meetings of the national SIGAda, sessions have been pushed
later and later in the evenings. Today, it is not unusual for a day at
a national SIGAda to start at 8:30 in the morning and last until 11:00
in the evening (on paper). With increasing demand for forums, SIGAda
may well find itself considering sessions which last past midnight.
One solution which immediately suggests itself is concurrent sessions.
Companies and organizations sending people to national SIGAda meetings
should know full well that sending only one person to such meetings is
not practical. Other national software-related organizations, e.g.,
the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers's (IEEE)
Computer Society, have meetings with concurrent sessions. Those
planning to attend such meetings plan their itineraries ahead of time,
and if more than one person from the same organization is planning to
attend, their itineraries are coordinated.
On another matter, there are an increasing number of Ada-related
forums, e.g., in the U.S. alone, there are the Washington Ada
Symposium (WAdaS), the annual Ada Software Engineering Education and
Training (ASEET) meeting, the annual meeting on Ada and Artificial
Intelligence, Ada EXPO, the Front Range Ada Working Group (FRAWG), and
others. Some of these may seem more useful than others.
This leads me to a series of open questions I want to ask the Ada
community. Currently, most, if not all, Ada organizations are lead by
hard-working volunteers. They do not possess the resources to conduct
formal surveys of their memberships. It is with the intent of
providing some information to the leaderships of these organizations
that I ask these questions.
Given that the very natures of Ada-related technologies and the Ada
community are changing rapidly:
1. Which national (or local) Ada-related organizations are you
aware of?
2. Which national (or local) Ada-related organizations do you find
most useful? Why?
3. Which national (or local) Ada-related organizations do you find
least useful? Why?
4. If you could make only two changes to those national (or local)
Ada-related organizations you found most useful, what would
those two changes be?
5. What can be done, if anything, to salvage those national (and
local) Ada-related organizations you find to be the least
useful?
6. Should SIGAda consider adopting a strategy like that of
SIGGRAPH? Specifically, having one large national meeting a year
with an even larger tradeshow which sometimes obscures the fact
that there is an ACM meeting going on at the same time?
7. How useful do you find Ada EXPO? Do you think it is critical for
such a "tradeshow" to be conducted in parallel with another
national Ada-related meeting, e.g., SIGAda? Is it time for such
tradeshows to stand on their own?
8. How necessary is it for Ada-related organizations to hold joint
meetings on a local or national level? Which Ada-related
organizations should hold joint meetings, in your opinion? Why?
9. Given that, on a global basis, the commercial use of Ada
technology far exceeds the military use of Ada technology, how
important is it to you to have active participation by the
military community at Ada meetings?
10. Given that it is very likely that the commercial use of Ada
technology in the U.S. will exceed the military use on or before
1990, how do you feel this should impact Ada-related
organizations?
11. If a majority of your organization's business is
defense-related, could they justify sending attendees to an Ada
meeting which was primarily commercial? How?
12. When you attend an Ada-related meeting on a national (or local)
level, what do you consider to be your primary areas of
interest: technical sessions, organizational policy sessions,
military policy sessions, vendor briefings, business contacts,
general information gathering, or other?
13. Do you feel it is necessary for new Ada-related organizations to
be created? If so, what would they be?
Obviously, there are more questions which could be asked. These can
serve as a beginning.
-- Ed Berard
(301) 695-6960
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