Message From the Symposium Chair -
INCOSE ‘99 - After the Event

Whilst outside of the Metropole hotel ‘sunny’ Brighton only lived up to its reputation for part of the time, within the Metropole things were very sunny indeed. The quality of the programme was self-evident with over one hundred and sixty top papers and views from around the world in thirteen panel sessions. Three plenaries, eighteen tutorials and the Academic Forum at the University of Sussex, all contributed to a packed and exciting programme.

The exhibition opened on the first evening with a reception for over five hundred delegates, providing a good start to the main part of the Symposium. This, and the proximity of all events around the exhibition hall with refreshments served there, kept the exhibitors happy.

Thirty-five organisations were represented in the exhibition that occupied fifty booths.

The invited speakers gave us plenty to think about. Sir Robert May expounded his theories and practical experience of high technologies and blowing holes through a few preconceived ideas relating national success stories to national populations and rewriting the league tables in the process. Our Banquet speaker Laurie Taylor amused us with his views on the effect of everyday technology upon the family and society whilst raising some fundamental concerns about the importance of human interactions. Professor Joan Solomon appealed to the process and support needed to teach and establish systems thinking within the educational environment and Professor Philip M’Pherson told us Systems Engineering was nothing new and provided a forty-five-year history with documentary evidence.

The ongoing work of INCOSE was evident through the activities of the Technical Board, Committees and Working Groups. One objective of the Symposium was to encourage new membership of the Working and Interest Groups. The Chapters and Membership Committees were busy with advising the growing number of start up and emerging chapters.

The support of our nine Patrons was fantastic and absolutely necessary for INCOSE to be able to commit to such a comprehensive celebration of Systems Engineering. We trust they were all happy with the result.

The biggest and the best? What do you think, only your personal experience will tell you if it was the best? The statistics tell us that there were seven hundred and thirteen delegates and over two hundred more exhibitor staff. Earlier predictions that Americans did not generally know where England is were proven unfounded as two hundred and eighty-three US delegates found it, beating the home audience by seventeen! We hope that they all found it worth the trip and enjoyed it as much as we all did.

The General Chair’s biggest challenge? - perhaps it was orchestrating the closing plenary - this has a reputation of over-running! There was a grim determination to get all the contributors to provide brief summaries of INCOSE’s work during the week, supported by slides assembled into a single presentation. Confronted by this demand, all the INCOSE officers and others involved responded magnificently and with good humour; a seventy-four slide presentation was assembled in about two hours from nearly twenty contributions. We only got one slide in the wrong place and although the plenary started ten minutes late, it finished only three minutes late!

Peter Robson
Symposium Chair