Invitation

Conference Chair: Mamdouh Ibrahim
IBM Global Services

Congratulations and Welcome!

Congratulations on being part of the premier forum for sharing of knowledge on object technology; OOPSLA 2002, and welcome to a week full of opportunities to learn, contribute, and exchange ideas and experiences in a broad range of disciplines woven with the common thread of object technology.

In preparation for this year’s OOPSLA, over two hundred people (mostly volunteers) have done their best to create an outstanding technical conference with a wide variety of events and activities designed to benefit a wide spectrum of participants ranging from novices to experts and everyone in between.

Object technologists from all over the world have come together to present interactive workshops, an outstanding set of tutorials, thought provoking invited speakers, panels and debates designed to surface controversy and provoke audience participation, technical papers on the latest object research, practitioners’ reports sharing lessons learned from development experiences, and two special tracks that promise to be of interest to both researchers and practitioners. The Onward! Track is designed to foster thinking out of the box in search for new computing models, and the focus of the second track is the hot topic of Web Services.

As in previous years, OOPSLA 2002 offers several forms of specialized activities. The Doctorial Symposium enables Ph.D. students to get feedback on their research ideas The Educators’ Symposium enables academic and industrial educators to share new ideas and best practices. The ever-popular DesignFest and CodeFest provide practitioners the opportunity to work on a real problem with others in the field. Also, feel free to organize your own Birds of a Feather session here at the conference.

Based on last year’s popularity, the OOPSLA Courtyard will once again be the hub of ongoing interactive activities during the three main conference days (Wednesday-Friday). In the Courtyard you will find commercial exhibits of the latest products, news, and publications. Also, the exhibit will feature the successful “geek alley” where you can pick up your favorite personal devices and software, and see demonstrations that present late-breaking results (including summaries of some pre-conference events), speaker follow-up sessions, Birds of a Feather sign-ups, job and message boards, tables for impromptu demos or discussions. Don’t forget to check out the OOPSLA Poster Session this year; it has been extended to include the first ACM SIGPLAN Student Research Competition. Finally, don’t miss the opportunity to network with your colleagues at the social events.

This is a busy and exciting conference. If this is your first OOPSLA join us Tuesday evening after the Welcome Reception for the Newcomer’s Session. We will answer your questions and give you some tips for organizing your activities.

On a sad note, the OOPSLA community lost two prominent pioneers, Kristen Nygaard and Ole Dahl, the winners of the 2001 Turing Award. They had planned on delivering the 2001 Turing Lecture at OOPSLA 2002. During the conference, a time slot will be allocated to reflect on their work and to honor their contribution to the field. I sincerely thank the authors, presenters, exhibitors, the entire conference committee, program committee, and all the other volunteers who have made this year’s OOPSLA not only possible, but an outstanding event. I also thank the OOPSLA Steering Committee, SIGPLAN, SIGSOFT, and ACM for sponsoring the conference and keeping us on track, while encouraging our innovations. Finally, I thank you, the conference attendees. You make OOPSLA a success. We are grateful for your continuing, enthusiastic support. One last note of advice: take this opportunity to explore what OOPSLA can offer, mingle, meet old acquaintances, make new ones, learn new things, contribute whenever you can, but most of all, ENJOY!