[MSLUG] OOPSLA'2007

schemeway at sympatico.ca schemeway at sympatico.ca
Mon Oct 8 10:01:34 EDT 2007


[From the ACM press release]

"The brightest minds in computer science will be at ooPSLA 2007, convening 
in chic, sophisticated, metropolitan Montreal, Quebec. Peter Turchi, author 
of "Maps of the Imagination," will use examples from writing and cartography 
to explore the challenges of discovery, the challenges of presenting those 
discoveries, and how the presentation itself is often the key to discovery 
(think Impressionism). Jim Purbrick and Mark Lentczner, also known as 
Babbage Linden and Zero Linden, will step away from reality into the virtual 
world of Second Life. Two Turing Award winners, Fred Brooks and John 
McCarthy, will be giving talks. Brooks will talk about collaboration and 
telecollaboration in design.

McCarthy will be presenting Elephant 2000, a proposed programming language 
good for writing and verifying programs that interact with people (e.g., 
transaction processing) or interact with programs belonging to other 
organizations. Gregor Kiczales will deliver a talk on how different contexts 
affect developer perspectives on software. David Parnas examines the problem 
of documenting the behavior of systems and their components, and how precise 
documents can make validation and verification easier. Patti Maes, honored 
with the title "Global Leader for Tomorrow" by the World Economic Forum, 
will be speaking from her background in media arts and sciences. Also 
planned is a special reprise of Gabriel and Steele's keynote "50 in 50" from 
HOPL III. OOPSLA 2007 runs October 21 through 25"

But, I would highlight this:

Fred Brooks, Turing Award winner, Mythical Man Month, No Silver Bullet. He 
doesn't agree often to speak.

John McCarthy, Turing Award winner, Lisp, AI. He doesn't speak often, and 
he's getting old.

David Parnas, very early guy in software engineering, modularity, 
information hiding.
Ornery. Doesn't speak much.

Jim Purbrick & Mark Lentczner, these are the Second Life guys.

Gregor Kiczales, Aspects, metaobjects, CLOS. Very good speaker. One of our 
most important thinkers.

Pattie Maes, reflection, ambient intelligence.

Guy Steele, Scheme, Fortress.

Brian Foote, Big Ball of Mud, one of the most entertaining speakers in 
computer science.

Richard Gabriel, Worse is Better

special surprise keynote:

Kathy Sierra, of creating passionate users fame.

Most conferences would consider themselves lucky to see any one of these 
people at  their conference (except for me, of course). To have all of them 
is extraordinary. This is probably the best lineup of speakers at any CS 
conference in history.




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