bamberg@sei.cmu.edu (Judy Bamberger) (11/03/90)
ACM Conference on Critical Issues in Computing
Hyatt Regency Crystal City
Arlington, VA
November 6-7, 1990
ACM is sponsoring an exciting, new kind of conference this
Fall -- the ACM Conference on Critical Issues. The two issues
featured this year are "Managing Complexity" and "Modeling
Reality." The goal is for participants to create an Action
Agenda that would (over a period of years, an with the cooperation
of many organizations) improve performance with respect to these
issues as we plan, develop and implement systems.
This is more than just another conference. It is a SUMMIT
on two issues which are of critical importance to the field of
computing. We must begin to take a more global approach to
assessing the current state of capability and prescribing
approaches to accelerating progress in these areas if computing
is to remain in the forefront as THE enabling technology.
Here's how the conference will work. After a brief opening
session, the participants will divide up into two sections to
work on one of the two issues. In each section, invited speakers
and responders will explore the many facets of the issue
(modeling reality or managing complexity). Then, using a
workshop format, the participants in each section go on to define
an action list for addressing their issue.
The conference report, which will be available in March,
1991, will merge the two action lists into an Action Agenda. The
report will be widely distributed to groups that might work with
ACM, or independently, to take the actions.
The speakers and panelists in "Modeling Reality" are Jay
Forrester, Stewart Dreyfus, John Kunz, Eleanor Wynn, David
Bolter, and Peter Denning. Those in "Managing Complexity" are
Edward Chevers, Rod Leddy, David Parnas, Robert Charette, and
Peter Neumann. There are not only computer scientists, but
people from development and applications areas also -- an
appropriate mix when you are considering issues like these.
The conference will be small, and every attendee will be
involved in making decisions leading to the Action Agenda. The
conference will be held November 6-7, 1990, at the Hyatt Regency
Crystal City in Arlington, VA.
You can request an advance program from: Don Nowak, ACM
Headquarters, 11 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036, (212) 869-
7440, e-mail: nowak@acmvm.bitnet. Don can also take your phone
registration, if you plan to use your Visa or Mastercard. To
reserve a room at the hotel by phone, call (703) 418-1234 and
mention the ACM Critical Issues Conference.weide@elephant.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bruce Weide) (11/10/90)
The Critical Issues Conference sounds interesting but also a bit scary. I worry that some bureaucrats will treat the resulting "action agenda" (which will certainly include the most popular if not necessarily the most important questions facing CS) as a real research agenda for computer science. A worst case scenario will be that funding for work in those areas voted most important by the attendees will dominate certain agency budgets, to the virtual exclusion of research in other areas. What precautions are there against this? Or is this the real purpose of the meeting? If so, I can only shudder at the likely outcome. (OK, I'm a cynic :-) Now that the conference has concluded, perhaps someone knowledgeable could BRIEFLY summarize to comp.software-eng the issues that the attendees voted most critical (at least those related to software engineering). This will be sure to inspire additional network traffic :-), but perhaps a significant fraction of it will be useful discussion of important issues. -Bruce