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I have to confess that I ended Thursday morning of the Symposium in Brighton with a huge sigh of relief. You see, that was when the formal technical programme for the Brighton Symposium finished and my involvement largely ended. Others still had a lot of work to do - there was another day of tutorials, for instance - for Peter Robson and Stuart Cornes to carry on with. But for me, there would be no more threats of authors not showing up for presentations, no more AV problems to deal with, no more last minute fixes to arrange.
Being part of the organisation for a large, live event like an International Symposium can be a harrowing experience. It wasnt for me, because the team had done a great job of preparation beforehand, leaving time and resources to deal with the live problems on the day. I am particularly indebted to Paul Davies who dealt with the Panel Sessions of the Formal Programme (15 out of the 56 formal sessions). We eventually referred to Paul affectionately as the Panel Beater, since that is what he sometimes had to do, to get them organised. Pete Lister did a great job with the CD-ROM production, and I owe him a special debt of thanks for stepping in during the event to supervise the loading of presentations onto the lap tops. Cass Jones and Christine Kowalski of PCMI -the professional Conference Organisers - were thoroughly professional in all that they did. They adapted very well to our general need to make it up as we went along - I believe the more usual term is prototyping - for this first time for INCOSE of handling all paper transactions electronically.
I should also mention the thirteen members of the Symposium Technical Committee who carried out a great deal of work with paper reviewing and so on. The committee was the type I like - we never actually met, so were able to get a lot of things done very quickly. For instance, the committee organised more than 1200 paper reviews by 150+ people and delivered the results in less than six weeks, including a Christmas Holiday Break.
The whole programme for the Symposium had been condensed down from 12 to 10 months and a number of key decisions had to be taken on the hoof. For instance, by the first due date for receipt of papers, (30th September 1998) we had only 50 or so. The decision to extend the deadline was more than vindicated when we had grown this figure to 297 by the revised date of November 16th! And, of course, this is largely what goes toward making a Symposium successful. Even with the best organisation in the World, no Symposium will be successful without good papers. If Brighton has been successful, it is because we were overwhelmed with a large number of quality papers drawn from a broad, truly International field. However, there was no gain without pain here. The handling of such a large number of papers in an already tight programme that had just been shortened by another six weeks meant that we really did bump up against the final end stops for things like publication deadlines. I must confess to probably adding a number of grey hairs to my colleagues by taking most things to the absolute final call. But then, whats the point of having milestones if you cant utterly exploit them?
Was the Symposium a success? Ironically, I dont have a clear personal view, as I saw so little of it during the Brighton week. I know that a lot of very good papers were included in the programme - I still have a list of about 30 or so in my "absolutely must read" category. I also got valuable feedback from the Paper Evaluation sheets that formed the basis of the Best Presentation Awards.
Let me encourage UK members to make their views on the Event known. We did ask for session reports to be submitted. Its not too late to do this. Send your report to
Allen Fairbairn So We Must Have Got Something Right!!
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