Subject: Universities and small companies at OMG

From: Jon Siegel <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Nov 1997 10:06:32 -0500

Hi, all --

Could I please add a personal invitation from OMG to academics and small 
companies, accompanied by the following facts about OMG membership and how 
we do all we can to make this attractive for these folks --

First, every class of OMG membership except auditing (which, by its name, 
shows that it is for observers only) allows full participation *and voting* 
in *every* SIG and Task Force on both Platform and Domain sides. Since RFPs 
and technology adoptions originate in Task Forces, this is the place where 
decisions are made. (Decisions are ratified in the Technology Committees by 
subsequent votes. Yes, voting in the TCs is restricted by membership class 
but it is rare to have a TF decision overturned so this is not much of a 
factor in practice. The size and general participation at the TC level 
prevents these bodies from doing much detailed revision of TF work.) 

University membership is $500/yr. This allows everyone associated with the 
university (faculty, staff, students) to sign up for as many OMG email lists 
as they want, and attend OMG meetings. The university gets one vote in each 
TF that at least one person attends; if only one person from the university 
shows up then he/she gets to vote, and if more than one, the group of you 
has to decide who votes. (OMG won't help sort this out!) Quite a number of 
OMG RFPs have been helped by active university participation, the most 
recent and visible being the workflow effort currently in process. BTW, the 
$500 rate is far less than our costs in servicing the membership and 
represents a sizable subsidy provided by shifting costs to the other 
membership categories. Privileges are identical to Influencing and 
Government categories, in spite of the much lower fee. 

Company membership at Influencing, Domain Contributing, and full 
Contributing levels all have revenue-based fees whose intent is to allow 
smaller companies to participate at the same level as large but for a fee 
they can afford. Since quite a number of startups and consultants belong to 
and participate in OMG activities, I observe that this works OK. Several 
small companies are members of OMG's Board of Directors. See our web site 
for the fee schedule; I don't do marketing and don't remember the numbers. 

Finally, OMG swaps memberships with other consortia and trade organizations 
when members or the organization requests and it makes sense. If you know of 
any organizations relevant to your work that we should work with, let Mark 
or me know. 

Do not underestimate the rewards of meeting attendance. Every OMG meeting is 
a significant event. With about 500 attendees and growing, our meetings 
bring together experts in every aspect of OT from analysis to 
implementation, from ORB vendor to end user, from businessperson to 
academic. Subgroups meet both individually and in joint work sessions; TC 
and AB plenaries have something for everyone. Continental breakfast, lunch, 
and breaks intentionally bunch all attendees four times each day, with name 
badges providing instant introductions. OMG staff and regular attendees will 
help you find someone in particular, or someone to help get something done. 
The typical attendee starts his appointments over breakfast and continues 
them in the evening through dinner and beyond in assorted bars and watering 
holes. Unless you intentionally resist, you will get even more benefit 
outside of meetings than in them. Do not count on seeing any tourist sights 
during the meeting; you'll surely be too busy. Plan to arrive a day early, 
or stay a day late, to avoid disappointment in this department. 

Sorry; travel costs are beyond our control and tend to be the same (or at 
least similar) regardless of who you work for :-) Alternative travel 
arrangements can bring costs down, of course - for example, reserving early 
and staying over a Saturday night for a cheaper air fare, or staying at a 
different hotel although our group rates tend to reduce the hotel below 
prevailing rates for similar rooms. The meeing fee pays for breakfast, 
lunch, and two snacks per day, and receptions typically provide enough food 
on two nights that you don't even need to buy dinner, so food costs can be 
kept down as well. I won't apologize about the need for international travel 
- we have university members on every continent, so there's no meeting 
location which will reduce travel costs for all of them. Plane trips are 
simply a price you pay to participate in an activity with worldwide impact 
and involvement. If not for this aspect, of course, OMG work would be far 
less attractive and rewarding. We move our meetings around the world on 
purpose and with several effects: it evens out the travel burden; exposes 
members to different locales, environments, and points of view which leads 
to an appreciation of differences and variation not acquirable any other 
way; and provides opportunity to see worthwhile and important sights in 
far-away places (usually quite enjoyable except for the regular visit to 
industrial New Jersey each alternate December). 

BTW there are academically-oriented workshops and symposia in OT held 
regularly around the world and you will usually find an OMG staffer and many 
members on the program and organizing committees. We sponsor a number of 
these ourselves, typically working with another organization. (I'm at one 
now, as I write this.) There is a sizable core group of academics and 
researchers who attend these workshops and the OMG meetings; I will be 
pleased to introduce you to any who attend a meeting that you come to visit. 

Sorry to go on so long, but I hope this info is all of value to you. 
Everyone is invited to come to an OMG meeting as a guest to look us over and 
see if OMG membership is for you. Just send email to either Mark or myself 
and we'll add you to the guest roster. You will have to pay the registration 
fee, but this buys five "free" lunches (and breakfasts, and ten snacks, and 
other stuff). 

Hope to see you at OMG --

Jon Siegel, Ph.D.
Director, Domain Technology
OMG

At 12:02 PM 11/11/97 +0000, Jeroen Coppieters wrote:
>On Tue, 11 Nov 1997, Konrad Hinsen wrote:
>[ I added Mark Lowenstein from OMG and the lifesciences mailing list to
>the recipients. If the readers of any of the other lists above feel that
>this topic should not be discussed on their list, then please let us know
>Jeroen]
>
>> > The demand for 50 copies is imposed by the OMG. They lack the infrastructure
>> > and logistics to run off the responses themselves for the distribution among
>> > attendants at meetings, and therefore ask the submitters to do this. I think
>> > this is not unreasonable, given the amount of work that is going on in the
>> > OMG.
>> 
>> But it does raise the question whether an OMG acitivity is the right
>> way to arrive at useful standards for scientific computing.
>> 
>> The OMG was founded by and for large companies; participation of
>> small companies and academic groups, although not ruled out in
>> principle, was not one of the design goals. Few small groups
>> and companies can even afford to participate in OMG activities
>
>OMG was founded by and for large companies, but they have been (and are)
>trying
>hard to make it open to all, including academia. A look at the membership
>list of OMG shows that many universities are members. I do not see that
>academics from lifesciences departments would be poorer than their
>counterparts from other departments. You do not have to attend each
>meeting to be involved. Most decisions can be reached by email
>discussions.
>
>> with their heavy administrative overhead. A look at the member
>> list of the life sciences group confirms this - there are hardly
>> any academics in it.
>
>There is no 'membership' to the life sciences research group. It is open
>to anyone who wants to contribute (by attending or by submitting
>information). I guess you have been looking at the attendace list for last
>meeting. This was the first meeting of the LSR group, so I do not think
>you can call it representative. I would like to repeat that this is an
>open forum, so anyone who feels he/she has something to share, please come
>forward.
>
>> 
>> On the other hand, much innovative work happens in academic groups and
>> small companies. Given that there is still very little practical
>> experience with OO techniques in scientific applications, it doesn't
>
>OO has been around for a long time (and has been thought to undergrads for
>ages). Many developers of scientific software (both academic and
>commercial) are well educated in OO. On the other hand many life science
>researchers have been thinking about objects, long before OO became
>fashionable.
>
>> seem useful to me to start a standards committee at all at this time,
>> much less one which excludes an important part of the people working
>> in the field.
>The whole point of the OMG approach is that it is possible to start
>modeling subdomains, without the need for an allencompassing model of the
>world. I agree that innovative work happens in academic groups and small
>companies. But that does not mean that a standard interface for common
>objects would restrain that research. There is a core of entities, that
>many researchers use and would like to be able to exchange without
>constant reformating overhead.
>Large companies are backing this proposal, which you seem to interprete
>negative. I think that it's this backing which gives us hope of achieving
>something. Previous (mostly academic) standarisation attempts failed,
>because of the lack of worldwide support.
>Large pharms do innovative work as well, and also rely on academic groups
>and small companies (via funding, contracting etc). So it's in their
>interest to see them involved.
>
>Jeroen
> > -- 
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Konrad Hinsen                          | E-Mail: [email-masked]
>> Laboratoire de Dynamique Moleculaire   | Tel.: +33-4.76.88.99.28
>> Institut de Biologie Structurale       | Fax:  +33-4.76.88.54.94
>> 41, av. des Martyrs                    | Deutsch/Esperanto/English/
>> 38027 Grenoble Cedex 1, France         | Nederlands/Francais
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> 
>
>EMBL Outstation EBI                             Jeroen Coppieters
>(European Bioinformatics Institute)      Research and Development 
>Wellcome Trust Genome Campus     [email-masked]
>Hinxton                                      (or [email-masked])
>Cambridge CB10 1SD UK                            ++44 1223 494422
>http://www.ebi.ac.uk                         fax ++44 1223 494468
>
>
>
>
>
>

==================================================================
Jon Siegel                           Phone:     508-820-4300 X124
Director, Domain Technology          Fax:       508-820-4303
Object Management Group        
492 Old Connecticut Path             email:     [email-masked]
Framingham, Massachusetts 01701 USA  http://www.omg.org
==================================================================