INCOSE to the Fore
The International Workshop
Membership
The Biggest and the Best
The Patron Programme for INCOSE ‘99
INCOSE ’99 Update
A Message From the I ’99 Exhibits Chair
Local Meetings
Human Factors National Advisory Committee
Autumn Event
Get Involved With a Working Group at Brighton
I seem to have been spending a lot of time on INCOSE matters over thelast month or so. Shortly after Christmas I attended my first UK Chapter Board Meeting asPresident Elect. A fair proportion of this was devoted to topics related to INCOSE’99.
Then in the last week of January I joined around 13 other UK Chaptermembers at the International Workshop in Mesa. Again I found myself embroiled in I’99, although there was time to take in a few other things.
In early February, we finally managed to organise an SEPDC meeting– almost 6 months after the last one. There we addressed the future role of the SEPDCbased on some of the input that was obtained from the Autumn Event at Malborough.
Interleaved with getting this Newsletter on the streets I am trying toselect a supplier for the I ’99 CD-ROM. This will be quite a challenge because theSymposium is being held about 6 weeks earlier than it usual.
I know that all the others involved in the planning of I ’99 arefinding things as busy – if not more so. I hope that all the effort that is being putin will be rewarded with increased activity within the UK Chapter as a whole. Something isstirring, John Mead reports on ever increasing UK Chapter membership. We are not sure why.Perhaps it is the Brighton effect, but whatever the reason the UK Chapter Board isencouraged by the increased interest. We hope that you will all find time to make the mostof what INCOSE has to offer locally, at Brighton, and worldwide.
Pete Lister
The Sheraton Mesa, Arizona, was buzzing with 150 INCOSE members allintent on making progress with their choice of working group or committee. My main purposewas to attend the meetings related to the INCOSE ’99 committee, but I also managed toattend two meetings of the Membership and Chapters committee.
The non-US attendance was higher than ever, boosted by a large UKcontingent. Whilst much of this was a result of the Brighton Symposium, there were severalinvolved on Technical Committees and Working Groups. Interestingly virtually all thecommittees that do not have non-US members made a point of asking for internationalrepresentation.
The Workshop commenced with a Plenary session where the INCOSE officersselected by the recent ballot were sworn into office. The process for this was apparentlydefined in the early days of INCOSE and has now become a tradition. To my eyes it seemed alittle quaint, and I can’t see the approach being adopted for elections to the UKChapter, but when in Rome…
The new President, Ken Ptack, then told us of the challenges for hispresidential year. He wants to see more international involvement, as measured by thepercentage of non-US members and the signing up of new chapters. He has also set an aim ofachieving 5,000 membership. This requires both the introduction of new members and theretention of old members. As of last August around 60% of the people who had ever joinedINCOSE had subsequently left.
Ken is also committed to improved communication, increasedcollaboration and more quality products.
These are really two different committees, but they were run in tandembecause the issues dealt with by them are closely related. The aim of the ChaptersCommittee is to help ensure that Chapters are successful by sharing good and badexperiences.
The structure for the meeting was to ask four questions of theassembled Chapter representatives:
I found it interesting, and rather comforting, to find that most of theissues raised were familiar to us in the UK. The ratio of active to passive members seemedto be a fairly stable metric and perhaps not surprisingly people were drawn by interestingand educational events. There are of course no easy answers but there were many ideas andsuggestions that would help to ‘tune up’ chapter operations.
There are 34 Chapters in existence at the moment, three newly formedthis year. Two of these are in America and the third is NORSEC (remember you heard it herefirst). Finland, Sweden, Montreal/Toronto are possible candidates for next year. Overallmembership is around 3,300 (including those affiliated through SESA) after a significantdip in August.
Lew Lee of the Membership Committee presented a detailed analysis ofthe LA Chapter (his local) membership. Like us in the UK he found that chasing up‘lost sheep’ brought some back into the fold, although statistics for recentleavers showed that they were not only ‘one year wonders’. Some of them had beenwith INCOSE since 1992, and there was no clear indication why they should suddenly leave.
The Chapters Committee will be one of the first INCOSE groups to makeuse of the Mesa Vista web tool. This will enable members to hold virtual meetings and keeptrack of work products, actions, reviews, discussion threads and much more. Mesa SystemsGuild Inc. are providing the tool free to INCOSE – and no doubt gaining some valuablesales leads and experience as part of the bargain. Mesa Vista will undoubtedly be of greatbenefit to all INCOSE committees making it easier to do business outside of face-to-facemeetings. Certainly the demonstration looked very impressive and I for one am lookingforward to trying it out.
The other web news is that the INCOSE website has been equipped withsome new list server software. Those of you on the INCOSE discussion forum will already beusing it. INCOSE are now in a position to support mail reflectors for all chapters. If Iunderstood what was said correctly it is possible for the mail lists to be maintainedremotely.
Finally there was an opportunity to meet with the Board of Directors tolet them know of any Chapter issues. There was a fairly lively exchange of views and adiscussion on a policy document relating to Regional Events (as in Regions I to VI inINCOSE, and not to be confused with UK regional events). Looking over my notes there doesnot appear to be anything of burning interest to report..
The closing plenary is the opportunity for all the committees to reportback to the whole workshop. The timetable is tight with contributions timed to the minute.
Perhaps the most controversial remarks came from the CAB. They havedecided that they do not support the use of capability model based evaluations ofcompanies in source selections by any procurement agency. They do however support the useof CMs as source material for evaluation criteria. They also support EIA 731 and wouldlike INCOSE to get involved in developing a standard for a 731 assessor.
This provoked rather strong reaction in the CMM camp, and I don’tdoubt that the anti-CMM brigade will be equally unhappy with the endorsement of 731.
Rich Harwell, responsible for Outreach and Collaboration, extolled thebenefits to INCOSE of working with other organisations. In concrete terms this means beingable to obtain the 632 standard at the EIA rate. It also meant collaborations such as thatwith the IEEE on their 1471 Architecture Standard.
There is much going on in the Technical Committees (TCs) and theirrelated Working Groups (WGs). Several are actively seeking new members or are expandingtheir activities.
The Commercial and Public Interest WG now boasts 7 going on 9 groupssigned up. This group belies the myth that INCOSE is all about Defence and Aerospace.
The Measurement TC is looking for non-US participation. So if you areinterested in Metrics and CMM get in touch.
The Modelling and Tools TC will have a forum on model based SE at theBrighton Symposium. They are also finding that their tools database on the web site isrecording huge numbers of hits.
The SE Management TC has a Risk Management WG that is looking forinternational membership, and the SE Processes and Methods TC has a Re-Engineering WGlooking for co-chairs. Also the Human Systems Interest Group is looking at teams and couldexpand to a WG.
The Symposium Committee announced that they had not yet selected alocation for the 2002 Symposium, but there was plenty of time. The timing of theInternational Workshop 2000 is known (last week in January), but no location has beenchosen. No Chapter has volunteered, and it has been decided that PCMI should organise it.All that I know is that I hope to be there, and I hope to have time to get involved on oneof the TCs or WGs.
Pete Lister
It really is encouraging when we see the membership growing and all thehard work being successful. INCOSE UK is now the third largest INCOSE Chapter in the wholeINCOSE world. I suspect Australia SESA (300 or so) would claim to be there but they areaffiliates rather than ‘full’ members.
The official figures over the last few months are Sep-186, Oct –211, Nov – 220, Dec – 233, Jan - 234. That is 25% up in 4 months. I also have10new members this month so far, and a number of enquiries that I have replied to that couldtake us above 250 if they all join. This still leaves us behind Los Angeles, which boasts270 at the end of January with Washington Metro way out in front with 465. All figures aretaken from Central Office reports as at 12 January. Our numbers have kept going up despitehaving the transfer out of several members from Scandinavia who have been with us for sometime as there was no local chapter. Most are now with NORSEC.
If every-one that had intended to renew, but never quite got around toit would get their cheque books out, and send me £20.00 to take them through to the endof May, we might even catch up with Los Angeles.
If you have any queries on membership issues, or wish to join (rejoin)then contact John Mead:
20 Beehive LaneThere is the real possibility that this year the INCOSE ‘99 eventat Brighton will indeed be the Biggest and the Best. We already have a fantastic selectionof 18 tutorials, having to extend the event to accommodate them. We have had such anexcellent input of papers, only just short of 300 and we have managed to squeeze 164 intothe main programme plus 15 Panel and forum sessions. We also have the Academic Forum,technical tours, and such a range of additional events that we can confidently say that itwill be - The Best!
To be - The Biggest! - we need to have more delegates than ever before.I think that the largest so far was in 1997 at Los Angeles with 940. It will not happenwithout a great deal of work, but with a really fantastic programme in store it should bepossible to attract record numbers. If everyone does their best to make other SystemEngineers aware of the event, then we could see a really good crowd, making it asuccessful event financially and socially as well as technically.
We will be asking for help to distribute flyers for the event in thenear future. They have been designed for people who are not already familiar with INCOSE.So if you know any one that you think should be interested request an extra supply todistribute, or send their details to me. The draft of the flyer is printed herein, with atear-off strip for sending additional names.
All members will receive the full brochure with full booking details,full technical programme, etc delivered through their doors in March
John Mead
When you see the final layout in the 1999 Symposium brochure you willall see what a fantastic response we have had to the Patron Programme so far.
In case any of you are not familiar with the Patron Programme I willexplain briefly. It costs an awful lot of money to put on an event such as theInternational Symposium. It is very risky for a young and growing organisation like INCOSEto undertake. In return for financial support for particular parts of the event, a patronorganisation gets a considerable amount of publicity, exhibition space etc (and of courseour thanks) for removing some of this risk.
It was particularly important this year, because we were faced withcosts for additional room space and facilities to accommodate the enormous number of verygood papers and tutorials that we desperately wanted to put on. The early response fromPatrons was so good that Ginny Lentz, the Board Symposia committee chair, was able toagree to our ambitious proposals. She commented that the only reason that they were ableto consider putting on extra space and facilities was because of the level of sponsorshipthat had been promised. So many thanks to all those companies that got in early. Theyare:-
Many thanks to them all.
Others that are still making their decisions are urged to contact mea.s.a.p. so that I can ensure that they get their full range of benefits.
John Mead
Our preparations for INCOSE 99 are really gathering pace now. Lookingback on my last article for the Chapter Newsletter makes me realise just how much hashappened since and also just how little time we have left! INCOSE 99 could well be theworld’s largest gathering ever of systems engineering practitioners.
From the point of view of potential delegates, the most important thingto tell you is that we have now determined the shape and content of the technicalprogramme. It will be the most extensive INCOSE Symposium programme ever with papers andpanels in seven tracks over eight quarter-day sessions, topped and tailed with plenariesaimed at really stimulating our forward thinking. That’s the three core days (8th to10th June), with the major exhibition in parallel providing a physical focus for theevent. In addition to over 150 presented papers, there will be around a hundred posterpapers. This is BIG by any standards and indicates the world-wide interest.
We have had to expand the tutorial time, so that there are now fourhalf-day tutorials on each of Sunday 6th June and Friday 11th June, as well as tenfull-day tutorials on Monday 7th June, in parallel with the Academic Workshop. Thenthere’s all the INCOSE meetings, including substantial time for open meetings of theWorking and Interest Groups. This is a week not to be missed and, when you see thebrochure, I believe you will feel that the whole event will offer extremely good value formoney - after all, we’re a ‘not for profit’ organisation!
So, I hear you asking, when do we see all this detail. Well, let me‘fill you in’. Before, during and after the INCOSE International Workshop inArizona at the end of last month, several of us have been working away at finalising thecontent of the INCOSE 99 Brochure. Allen Fairbairn has slaved over a hot laptop toconsolidate the reviewers’ scores on nearly three hundred papers and has structured aprogramme to present them to their best advantage so far as delegates are concerned -quite an undertaking! The brochure should be in the post by the end of February. If youare anxious to find out all about it sooner, I am expecting the content of the brochure(and more) to be on the INCOSE 99 web site that Stuart Cornes has had under constructionover the last few months. Keep a look out at www.incose.org.uk/incose99 during the fourthweek of February. As well as full viewable information, there will be many downloadables,including the full brochure with its Registration Form and hotel information. Stuart isalso planning to provide a zipped version of a complete web site that you can download andmount on your corporate intranets - so there is something that everyone can do to helppublicise the event.
I hope you enjoyed Ian Sedgley’s article in the last INSIGHT;another one is commissioned for the first 1999 edition and I expect that there will belots more on INCOSE 99 therein.
There is much more I could tell you about but space is limited so Iwill just suggest that you re-read the articles in the last Newsletter and INSIGHT andthen keep a close watch on the web site in these final months. If you want to get involvedwith the arrangements, either before or during the event, please contact me by e-mail and .
Peter Robson, Symposium General Chair
The Exhibits Program is attracting interest from both Europe and NorthAmerica. Companies who have confirmed attendance to date including TD Technologies Inc.,Center for Systems Management, Vitech Corporation, I-Logix Inc., Compliance AutomationInc., Quality Systems and Software, NUTEK, Quantitative Software Management, and more.
As well as exhibitors we are also reserving exhibition spaces for ourPatrons who are providing sponsorship of the conference. Current Patrons include:
| British Aerospace | Platinum Plus Patron |
| Ascent Logic Corporation | Platinum Plus Patron |
| DERA | Platinum Patron |
| The Aerospace Corporation | Gold Patron |
| 3SL | Silver Patron |
| Aerosystems International | Silver Patron |
With over half the available booth space already reserved and the levelof ongoing interest we are anticipating a varied and informative exhibition to complimentthe main technical tracks and tutorials
If you require any further information about the event please contacteither myself, Jane Smith, or John Herriot at Meetings Management, at the addresses below.
Jane SmithINCOSE '99 Exhibits
After 12th April, Jane’s contact details change to:
Quintec Systems ConsultancyThere have not been many local meetings in the last six months, despitean encouraging flurry in early 1998. We used to call them ‘regional’ meetings,but this could be confused with INCOSE Regional meetings (as in Regions I to VI), so Ihave taken the initiative to change the name.
Chris Davies approached me at the Autumn Event last October andsuggested stirring up some local activity in the West Country. I had hoped to give fulldetails of a meeting in this Newsletter, but what I can do is indicate when it is likelyto happen and give you contact information.
Dates in mid/late April have been reserved at the BAe club (13th, 21stand 22nd), and if Chris can sign up a speaker on one of these dates then a local meetingwill occur. We would hope to attract some new members, so if you are in the Bristol areaplease find out the details if only to encourage others to attend.
You can contact Chris at:
Systems EngineeringIf anyone else is prepared to organise or host a local meeting JohnMead, or any member of the SEPDC will be glad to advise. We are generating a list ofspeakers and topics, and are able to offer advice, support and possibly even limitedfinancial assistance.
Pete Lister
I have had a letter from Dr Ronald McLeod that may be of interest toany members who have an interest in Human Factors. The letter states the following:
"The Department of Trade and Industry has recently established aNational Advisory Committee on Human Factors. This is one of a number of NACs set up bythe Engineering Industries Directorate under the Foresight Defence and Aerospace Panel.The role of the HF NAC is to provide advice and national priorities for Human Factorsresearch in the Defence and Aerospace industries.
"For my sins, I have been invited to serve on the committee. Iunderstand that my specific remit is to represent the views of Human Factors/ Ergonomicsconsultancies (as opposed to Manufacturing Industry, Academia or Government). The post isunfunded.
"I am keen that I should be able to fulfil this role properly. Iwould therefore like to invite members of INCOSE, who are consultants with an interest inHuman Factors, to contact me if they would like me to be aware of their views and to keepthem informed of the work of this committee. If you are interested then please contact meat:
Nickleby HFE Ltd"If there is sufficient interest, it may be that I will arrange ameeting to sound out how I might best perform this role."
The Board of the UK Chapter has received a general notification aboutthe setting up of NACs. It has been agreed that it is important that INCOSE members areseen to contribute to this initiative wherever possible. This will help to increase theinfluence of INCOSE as a body and Systems Engineering as a discipline. I would encourageany members who feel they have something to contribute to get in touch with Dr McLeod. Iwill be happy to publish similar requests from other committees or bodies.
Pete Lister
The SEPDC has already started thinking about the Autumn Event for theUK Chapter. We are well aware of the focus on Brighton, but it is important to ensure thatthere is something to follow.
We have not generated any detailed plans yet, but we thought that itwould be useful to let you know our current thoughts. In the first place it will help yourfuture planning, but more importantly it gives you the opportunity to make suggestion andhelp to mould the programme.
The event will be scheduled for two full days, and the preferred dateis in the week beginning 15th November. This should avoid half term (which has causedproblems in the past), be sufficiently long after Brighton for us to get things together,and not too close to the Christmas festivities.
A Northern location is being considered, in an attempt to overcome anotably Southern bias for previous events, and hopefully encourage members from the higherlatitudes to attend.
The aim is to make the event a learning experience for all those whoattend. Thus we would like to include working/discussion groups, tutorials, panels as wellas in depth presentations on matters of interest to INCOSE members. The general form thatis being considered is an opening plenary session, followed by parallel activities broughtto a close with another plenary. This would allow group findings to be broadcast to allthe delegates, as well as an odd half hour to complete the necessary AGM formalities.
In previous years the SEPDC has orchestrated the programme for thisevent, but this year we would like to see if we can locate volunteers rather thanconscripts. We are sure that there are things going on out there that we are not aware of,and this may be a way of finding some fresh material. So if you are able to suggest, oreven better volunteer to lead/run, an activity please let Mike Prince of the SEPDC know.Ideas could cover anything from a 2 hour slot to a 2 day marathon.
If there are no offers from you out there, then the SEPDC press gangwill be out and about later in the year. You can be sure that we are aiming to make theAutumn event larger and even more enjoyable than last year.
You can contact Mike Prince at:
BAe Defence SystemsAllen Fairbairn called for active members to get involved with one ofthe ‘main’ INCOSE Technical Committees or Working Groups at last year’sAutumn Event. The SEPDC are now considering how to act as a catalyst for this to happen,and also ways to capitalise on UK involvement to benefit members who lack the time offinancial commitment to be permanently involved.
The first part of the strategy is to encourage members to take part,and the Brighton Symposium offers an excellent opportunity. All the Technical Committeeswill be meeting during the Symposium week. The Symposium represents one of the twooccasions each year when committees can meet together face to face (the other being theInternational Workshop). It is also the occasion when they encourage the uncommitted toget involved. As reported from the IWS, many of the committees are actively seeking non-USrepresentation. There are already at least four UK members in the thick of things atvarious TCs and WGs.
If you are interested, you need not be too worried about the costs ofgoing to meetings. Much valuable work is already done ‘off-line’ via e-mail, andwith the introduction of the Mesa Vista web tool much more is going to be done that way.There are also several activities that have recently started, or are still gainingmomentum, so you do not need to worry about jumping onto a moving juggernaut.
So, your course of action is clear. Look at your Symposium brochurewhen it arrives, and see what TCs and WGs there are on offer. The contact details for thechairs and co-chairs should be there (or if not you will find them in Insight) and any ofthem would be glad to give you more details of their programme. If you can make it toBrighton then find out when your chosen group is meeting, go along, and introduceyourself. You can be assured of a warm welcome.
The next part of the SEPDC strategy will be to contact all the UKmembers that have signed up for a TC or WG and try to establish some form of UK Chapterco-ordination. But that, as they say, is tomorrow’s problem. We shall return to thissubject in a later Newsletter!
Pete Lister
Last Updated: 07 March 1999
