Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!uunet!pyrdc!grebyn!schultz
From: schultz@grebyn.com (Ronald Schultz)
Newsgroups: comp.object
Subject: Object-World Conference Review
Keywords: Conference Object-World
Message-ID: <1991Jun18.124231.11599@grebyn.com>
Date: 18 Jun 91 12:42:31 GMT
Organization: Grebyn Corporation
Lines: 112


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