schultz@grebyn.com (Ronald Schultz) (06/18/91)
Trip Report for Object-World San Francisco - June 3-7 Prepared by Ron Schultz Agenda Tuesday - June 4 Arrival at Object-World, Quick tour of the vendor exhibits Wednesday - June 5 Attended portion of Keynote address by Colin Crook of Citybank Attended Session titled Management of the Information Systems Development Process Attended Session titled Adopting Object Technology Toured the exhibit floors and met with exhibitors and vendor reps Thursday - June 6 Attended Session titled Executive Champions of Object Technology Toured the exhibit floor Comments Object World was touted as "The First Show of Force in Object Technology". Twenty Seven vendors were present. Of these four were magazine publishers, four were OODBMS vendors, three were Smalltalk related vendors, and four were large computer vendors. The remaining vendors were a mix of development tools, GUI interface builders, consultants and trainers, and compiler vendors. IBM was not present, although in the initial Object-World advertising it was announced IBM would be. This was clearly not a show of force by any stretch of the imagination. Object World attempted to address the needs of the commercial marketplace. Sessions focused on commercial topics such as "Gaining Competitive Advantage", "Integrating Legacy Systems with Object Systems", and "Executive Champions of Object Technology". Yet in many cases the sessions seldom met the expectations generated by the program agenda. Take for example the following abstract for Adopting Object Technology. MT-2 Adopting Object Technology Object-oriented technology promises great payoffs in the long run, but there are costs and challenges associated with its adoption. This session explores the decisions, costs and early benefits of the decision to go object-oriented. Which platform (language, hardware, and OS) should you choose? How can you integrate the old with the new? Do you need and object-oriented database to keep everything organized? How do you get your people to sign on? How long does it take to get results? And what are those results? Chair: Esther Dyson of EdVenture Speakers Nancy Martin from Coopers and Lybrand, Sesha Pratap from Saber Software, and Jim King from NCR. This session basically ignored every question mentioned in the abstract. Each speaker talked in anecdotes about their particular encounter with OO. Only Jim King from NCR gave specific and useful information concerning any of the questions mentioned in the abstract. When I specifically asked about the chair about the costs of starting an OO effort I was told "it all depended, it varied on pilot project size, ...". Nancy Martin said to use my technology insertion model to determine the costs. I found this interesting in that I have found very, very few organizations with formal technology insertion models in place. This entire session was dominated by vagueness and obtuse references to object nirvana. I found this lack of tangibility and specifics the case in most of the sessions I attended. While I found the anecdotes entertaining I could see little presented at this conference that would convince me to utilize object-oriented technology. Even the term "object" was used in vague and often contradictory ways. As an example, an Object management Group paper distributed at the conference showed a class hierarchy of document that included objects such as pages, sections, paragraphs, and words. I do not recall situations where attributes or operations for documents are useful on specific words. For the object naive, this conference I believe was a waste of conference dollars. The attendees did not even receive a conference proceedings. For those familiar with object technology, this provided an opportunity to see how vendors are trying to expand their sales and marketing into the commercial marketplace, and expand out of their current niche markets. As an aside, in a previous life I was involved in a number of Interop shows. Interop is a trade show that focuses on OSI and TCP-IP communications and interoperability. Interop started out as a small show (100-200 people) and in four years grew to over 2000 in attendance. At the point attendance exceeded 2000 TCP-IP and OSI were what could be considered mainstream. Object World attendance seemed less than 400 people, yet I was told by the show staff that registered attendance was over 2500. The real force of object technology, at least in the commercial marketplace, seems a minimum of three to five years away. I would like to hear other people's comments about Object World. Thanx. Ron Schultz schultz@grebyn.com 614-798-0295
dlw@odi.com (Dan Weinreb) (06/19/91)
In article <1991Jun18.124231.11599@grebyn.com> schultz@grebyn.com (Ronald Schultz) writes:
For the object naive, this conference I believe was a waste
of conference dollars. The attendees did not even receive a
conference proceedings.
I believe that's typical for this kind of conference. It's not like
an academic conference. It's more like a trade show with seminars and
panels. Things like Object World are often specifically addressed to
people with relatively less technical background, rather than to the
kind of people who would benefit from the kind of academic conferences
that issue conference proceedings. It sounds to me as if you were
overqualified for Object World. On the other hand, I agree that these
conferences are often oversold, as if you can just wander in, get all
the answers to all the hard real-world management questions, and
wander back out.
The real force of
object technology, at least in the commercial marketplace,
seems a minimum of three to five years away.
If you mean that there's likely to be substantially wider use of
object technology in three to five years than there is now, I agree
with that. Despite the usual characterization of the computer world
as being "fast-paced", it takes a lot of time for new ideas to spread
all around.dlw@odi.com (Dan Weinreb) (06/19/91)
By the way, thank you for posting the review of the conference. I'd be interested in reading peoples' reviews of conferences in general.
klimas@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com (06/20/91)
In article <1991Jun18.124231.11599@grebyn.com>, schultz@grebyn.com (Ronald Schultz) writes: > > Trip Report for Object-World > San Francisco - June 3-7 > Prepared by Ron Schultz ...stuff deleted... > At the point > attendance exceeded 2000 TCP-IP and OSI were what could be > considered mainstream. Object World attendance seemed less > than 400 people, yet I was told by the show staff that > registered attendance was over 2500. The real force of > object technology, at least in the commercial marketplace, > seems a minimum of three to five years away. > > I would like to hear other people's comments about Object World. > Thanx. I think a more realistic barometer of the technology's growth is OOPSLA which does do exceedingly well with over 2000 attendees last fall (and IBM folk were session chairs). I think a lot of OOP practitioners are saving their "recesionized" OOP travel budgets for that event.
lyons@srg (Don R. Lyons x4811) (06/21/91)
In article <1991Jun20.101752.4921@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com> klimas@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com writes:
I think a more realistic barometer of the technology's growth
is OOPSLA which does do exceedingly well with over 2000 attendees
last fall (and IBM folk were session chairs). I think a lot of OOP
practitioners are saving their "recesionized" OOP travel budgets
for that event.
I went to OOPSLA last year and was disappointed. The conference,
in my opinion, was lacking practical information. Next year, I
hope OOPSLA spends more conference time on OO Design, OO Proj
Management, C++ ( that is "conference" and not 2 days of tutorials)
and less time on reseach papers discussing Smalltalk and CLOS.
-don
--
Don R Lyons Any opinions expressed are my own.
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