OOPSLA had, for many years, been a place where many different types of people came to learn and to network. When things started getting cut from OOPSLA, these two features began to fade. When the program began to have less variety, there wasn't such a diversity of things to learn and a diversity of people to learn from and to network with. So what does everyone think? Do we want the old OOPSLA back, or are we thinking that it would be better to make the conference more focused? (I miss the old OOPSLA -- it was "one stop shopping" for many of the things I needed to learn and many of the colleagues I needed to see.)
-MaryLynnMannsGush -CeciliaHaskins
I do agree that OOPSLA should be the place where we continue the search for next generation computing paradigms. That was the challenge I posed during the conference opening remarks in 2002 and for the strong support of Dick's proposal to establish the Onward! track. The question is how we can influence OOPLSA to move into that direction and prevent it from being a narrow focused conference. To that end I tend to not limit OOPSLA emphasis on development only, though I have to admit that the development part was why OOPLSA attracted such a large number of industry participants. -- MamdouhIbrahim
So I suggest we have other (famousinteresting) people talk about these great ideaspapers.
-- KenBauerOr how about a paper session where instead of having the papers presented, we have the audience discuss the papers in the session. We assume that the audience has read the papers, and the authors will be in attendance for the discussion, but instead of having a boring slideware presentation, we have an animated discussion that involves the expertise of the entire audience. --BjornFreemanBenson
One trick I saw at a sociology mini-conference was to have someone other than the author give a talk about the paper, then let the author comment on the comments. The speakers had obviously put in a lot of care, so I think it was an established, well-understood practice. It was particularly interesting to see the speakers tie the work into their own concerns. There's a potential for a defensive author to make for an ugly scene. I imagine that they chose speakers to avoid that, though there also seemed to be some tradition or protocol working against it. -- BrianMarick
In times when travel is a problem, why not bring the conference to the customer. Develop some very good sessions as a groupeffort with multiple people able to present, run the session. Bring those sessions to the customers. May sound as training, but we bundle. make it into a multiday event.
Martine
In all the places where I worked after I left academia people seemed to have liked OOPSLA at some point but were considering it too academic. I don't agree with their position. However, I bet many of these people will return if the conference strikes (again?) the right balance between academic and industrial work. What would be some ways of injecting more of the latter into the conference?
-Dragos Manolescu