Here's what has been suggested by a couple of guys so maybe we should start with considering whether having a three-day conference (like 2008) or a five-day conference that overlaps with Mon-Tu-Wed presentations overlapping on Wed-Thu-Fri and having two tracks.
One track would be "How to do it" kind of presentations where someone would have 90 minutes to tell, start-to-finish, how a real-life project was actually done. This would begin with the problem statement, definition compromises, knowledge acquisition, basic design, tools used, some example rules, etc. However, only one presentation about a bank project, one presentation about an insurance project, one project about a medical diagnosis, one problem about configuration management, one project about ... You get the idea. All presentations would be submitted and "The Selection Committee" would pick the ones that we think that most of the attendees would like to see.
The second track could be tutorials, demonstrations, labs by various vendors, etc. (I'm not crazy about this one and if nobody wants it we can just not do it.)
The second track could be something practical like different ways of looking at things. For example, we could do one on ontology (we had two of those at ORF 2008), or maybe another one how to make rules work with Neural Nets or one on using rules with Decision Simulators, etc.
I would think that Monday morning would begin about
- 8:00 - 9:00 registration.
- 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 Keynote from some industry leader. ONLY ONE KEYNOTE all week.
- 10:30 - 12:30 Session 1 for both tracks
- 12:30 - 2:00 Lunch
- 2:00 - 3:30 Session 2
- 3:45 - 4:15 Session 3
- 4:30 - 6:00 Session 4
Tuesday
- 9:00 - 10:30 Session 5
- 10:45 - 12:15 Session 6
- 12:15 - 2:00 Lunch
- 2:00 - 3:30 Session 7
- 3:45 - 4:15 Session 8
- 4:30 - 6:00 Session 9
Wednesday
- 9:00 - 10:30 Session 10
- 10:45 - 12:15 Session 11
- 12:15 - 2:00 Lunch
- 2:00 - 3:30 Session 1
- 3:45 - 4:15 Session 2
- 4:30 - 6:00 Session 3
And so on to Friday afternoon at 5:00 or so. Probably (maybe) sessions 8, 9 & 10 would/might be sparsely attended on Friday. They were WELL attended on Friday for ORF 2008 - probably because we kept the Big Gun until the last session. :-) But maybe we could drop out some sessions (9 & 10) and do a wrap-up right before or after Lunch on Friday. Even with the dropouts, we would have 16 sessions, 8 per track. Depends on how many really good talks we get scheduled.
Well, there you have it. The first agendum on the table is the Agenda schedule for the Conference. :-)
SDG
jco
Posts
1 comment:
Here are my 0.02EUR about how my ORF2009 dream looks like:
Duration: Three days for the core conference. Maybe some extra days if someone comes up with something like the "Bootcamp" the Drools people had this year.
But not as a part of the core conference. If it's "next to a weekend" (starting Monday or ending Friday) would help me personally with the travel.
Maybe if it does not end on a friday we may see less people running away at noon. (just a guess)
Location: No real preference, US/Dallas is fine. Please make sure it's somewhere warm (also on the inside)
Contents/Subjects:
* "How to do it" sounds like a good concept to me. Please make this shorter (max 60 minutes, preferably 45) and allow more time for questions and casual exchange.
* I really think ORF2009 should try the OpenSpace format. We have been using this for a few years now and I think it's perfect for the type of exchange I found most valuable at ORF2008.
In a nutshell it turns a conference into a never ending coffee break.
Coffe break = the most valuable moments in a conference when you (by accident) found a peer that shares your intrest/problems etc. It jsut removes the "accident" :-)
See for some more details Anatomy of an Open Space event
So I propose a mixed mode of traditional and OpenSpace sessions, with OpenSpace in the afternoon. Depending of where ORF2009 takes place we could help with organisation/facilitators (we have been doing this on an "ORF" like scale)
* If there are intresting (!) demos/tutorials by vendors then let's have them. Keep them short and sweet so that the presenters have to make a choice what they _really_ want to tell us.
* The Ontology bit was quite intresting to me, I would like to see more of this. I also would like to see more out of the "real" reasearch area and I would not lomit this to "stricly rules".
Everything that makes sense in application areas where rule based systems are applied is welcome.
Others:
* For the coffee price we ORF2008 was charged, I will personally prepare it for you ;-)
* We need the cane!
* I was and still am looking forward to the pub nights. It's ORF! :-)
What would help is to have some limited suggestions on the agenda where to go so that it does not become to random. What I mean: "Pub night at X which is located at Y".
ingomar dot otter at valtech dot de
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