OOPSLA As a wack to the side of the head

The only real reason to attend a mad scene like OOPSLA is for that wack to the side of the head that shakes lose some of your preconceptions, and hopefully allows you some room for those ideas that seem to gravitate to such occasions.

Here was the advice given at the start of the day:

• three new acquaintances
• gain an in site, lose a preconception
• explore the next big thing

We will see how well I do.

But First

Lets get a few things out of the way:

• Most Improved Player Award - Microsoft Cooperation had a horrible showing at OOPSLA 2004 where they misread their audience, this year they are taking care of the student volunteers who make the event a success. I tracked down at least one of their representatives personally, way to go guys.

• Most Impressive Use of Multimedia - Ron and Richard presented an amazing production of multi media tag team stage craft along the subject of "Conscientious Software" with references to Eric Clapton and Micro-Biology feedback systems. Fun stuff.
• Cool - The KeyNote bringing together a feedback from poetry and expression  to the massively multiplayer experience. And heck 1/f pink noise was around in the form of water and wind chimes to close the gap with music as an expression of nature.

So with all that out of the way what the heck can I possible communicate about OOPSLA?  Well for one this creative lot puts on a  fine show. It is almost like they communicate ideas for a living.

New Acquaintances

Well I did find one interesting spatial application here at OOPSLA, and me the author: Mr. Steffen Schaefer. Here is a link to A Sensor Network Solution for reliable and more secure Container Shipments.

I was also amused during The Ultra Challenge: Software Beyond Big to find a Mr. Gregor Kiczales using GeoSpatial emergency response as one of these impossibly hard problems, citing "24" as the gold standard by which success could be measured (a show lasts 55 minuets can you create an operational picture?).

Many of the scalability questions are relevant to the ongoing catalog debates raging in the Geospatial community right now.  I will cite a couple of  reason why we have a chance of success where other fields such as health care are rather doomed.  By definition our user community thinks in terms of FeatureTypes (every map has a key to guide the reader in interpretation), and we have the wonderful escape of "integration by eyeball" (so information from different sources can appear on the same map regardless).

I did love the panel and previous keynote on the subject as both Software Engineering and the Agile approaches break down under SCALE.  Always great to find another way to look at things.

Lose a Preconception

The Onward! The Geography of Programming was a fun insight other ways of looking at things. This time it was based on cultural differences.  A fascinating break down of a picture (that apparently has historical object oriented significant as a teach aid), where the cultural interpretation ranged from horrified at the disharmony presented, to a fascinating interplay and insight into the motivation of the actors present.

Here was the part that stuck in my mind as being just on the edge of my awareness was the following subtle insights offering by the following:

1. Natural Resting State - or the concept of "Harmony". The is an under current of "fear" present in a lot of the talks and material - how can stability be achieved?  Suggestions buffet from all sides, several talks searching to nature. A goal of 60% test coverage looks rather sad, if you are comparing against nature where QA functions seem to account for more of the material for life then actual function. The Ultra people tend to agree as they consider failure as always part of the system, and change as a continual aspect of the environment.
2. Group Action - a local resonance where a bunch of objects respond to the same stimulus. This is slightly different then the emergent behavior, or the web 2.0 quest to turn mob behavior into money.  The picture example was a table of party goers pointing to their cake at the other end of the picture, or a group of gossips laughing at a man who was unable to pay his bill (both of which I missed on first inspection)
3. Object and Field - and this is the nice one for me. By paying attention to the whole, the system rather then the parts becomes visible. If I break into a discussion of negative space or something you can blame a multi media high.

Just as a parting note, at FOSS4G (and recently on the OSGeo email list) it is becoming more and more apparent that Korea is where the action is for open source Geospatial cell phone and sensor fun. Now it could be they have less geography then say Canada (allows production of new cell phone network generations rather quickly), but I also suspect that the outlooks mentioned above will assist those cooperating on messy network based collaborative efforts.

So will your next language be English based? I find UML diagram in Kanji hard, but darn if Ruby is not a good time.

Explore The Next Big Thing

Well the Ultra Large Systems do qualify as the next BIG thing (because SCALE changes everything). But so far this seems to be a mess of questions with little answers.

So what is the next big thing? Patterns (by definition you have seen this already), Agile (now proved and boring), Aspects (reduced to the pragmatic by Spring).

Good thing I have a couple more days to keep my ears open.

Design Patterns Reception and Panel

In the words of John (who will be missed) the challenge of software development is all about  "People, People, People". As a great instigator John is missed by the community.