I personally feel that to attract the business crowd (the ones that tend to pay for things...) we're going to have to take a few pages from those conferences that do attract that crowd: We should create a track that's (a) not tutorials and (b) not papers or practitioners reports, but just presentations by knowledgable people on cool stuff. Think about what goes on at JavaOne, or at any of the other commercial conferences. Why is it that OOPSLA still doesn't have the option for 1 1/2 hour talks on new technology or techniques (that are NOT academic, and thus don't face the academic litmus test)? As an example, can I point people at the wildly successful, No. -KyleBrown
Gush. I think that JavaOne-like talks would make OOPSLA more valuable for most attendees. The academic paper track has value only for a small subset of the folks at the conference, but a track where people can learn about important ideas in practice and on the horizon, without paying for a 3.5-hour tutorial, would be well-attended.
I don't know what the economics of such a track would be. Do JavaOne and similar conferences pay their speakers? -EugeneWallingford
OOPSLA pays tutorials speakers (not very much). A 90 minute talk is half the work of a 180 minute tutorial, is generally more interesting to the speaker. Take, as an example, DavidUngar's talk from OOPSLA last year - it might have been an OK tutorial, but it would have been difficult to keep the audience (I believe). David had a stupid amount of excitement within himself about this talk, and people were talking about it quite a bit around the conference. I've been trying to make a DVD out of it the past 6 months with very little success, but I've now listened to this talk 20+ times and am very familiar with it. I think I understand what makes this a great talk, and it's pretty simple:
You get talks like that, and that's interesting stuff to the general public largely independent of the topic. (Lessig's talk was similar in feel to me, and it also had that same buzz around the conference. The last time I recall that same buzz was when some cat gave a talk at OOPSLA 1998 starting with something like "man is a given; woman is like a man, but not of the same sex.")
-- RonCrocker
(That quote is from Guy Steele's most excellent "Growing a Language." Here is a transcript.) - sjm
Another thought occurred to me after looking at the No Fluff site - JAOO is an outstanding conference that I've had the privilege of speaking at a couple of times (rpg's been as well), and it has generally outstanding content and meets this style. The down side is that it's 100% invited, which may not work with ACM's "peer reviewtenure track" desirerequirement. (I think JAOO is in the model Kyle Brown suggests above. -rpg)
-- RonCrocker
Actually neither JavaOne nor the No pay the speakers. Neither does the Software Development Conferences. A speaker gets a free conference pass, and sometimes a nice gift (on the order of a pen set, or a denim logo shirt) but that's it. They generally also reimburse for travel up to some limit, but that varies by conference. Some do, some don't. - KyleBrown
JAOO certrainly reimburses (or else I couldn't go :-).
If we want to 'revitalise' OOPSLA - get back to 2000 or 3000 attendees, then I think this means catering for the 'business' market - or the 'Jane Programmer' market. As long as we take 30 papers into the technical session, there will be 30 academics or !IBMers there to present them; as long as we have workshops we will get another couple of hundred. This is the ECOOP model, and it's fine for what it is.
Here's a question: why do people chose to pay their money to JavaOne No Software rather than to OOPSLA? Are our beloved technical programme, onward essays, workshops, even keynotes, and so on just ''fluff'' to these people? I'm not saying they won't appreciate them if they get to OOPSLA - but that they are not enough to make them (or their bosses) want to go? Could we redesign the OOPSLA advertising so that presented one image
In terms of "structure" (I'm thinking style rather than content here) - increase bandwidth access to conference program via a pay-for-view webcast - this could conceivably bring a larger more diverse audience (no travel costs/time)...and replay would make it possible for those wishing to attend parallel events.
-SteveFraserAn idea being mentioned in connection with other conferences and relayed for consideration here - a "customer track" that would provide feedback on how all our grand ideas have ruined their lives or realized their every dream. It could also address issues like intelligent consumerism - what to expect if they choose to implement new technologies, how to work with us weird types, what is hype-what is real, etc.