'Issue Process' Featured at IFIP Congress '94 (1995)

In September of 1994, the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) held its biannual congress in Hamburg, Germany. The IFIP Congress is intended to be a broadly based technical conference. The designation of the event as a congress rather than a conference is intended to convey the importance of active discussion as an important part of the meeting. However, in my experience, I have not see a distinction between the general structure of this "congress" and other "conferences" I have attended. There are papers, panels, and demonstrations arranged in parallel sessions, and discussions happen during coffee breaks and social events. There were roughly 1000 attendees from around the world --- a number that is much smaller than in the peak years of this event.There was one interesting innovation attempted at this 1994 congress that is worth mentioning. Through the efforts of the International Program Committee chair, Dr Ronald Uhlig, an "Issue Process" was introduced as a means for structuring the overall conference. The first phase of the congress was organized as a two and a half day technical program with tracks with specific themes. In this phase attendees could learn about a topic by attending the sessions (generally paper sessions) in any of the 5 parallel tracks (Hardware and Software Technology, Computer and Communications Applications, Social Impacts of Computers and Communications, Theoretical Foundations of Computing, and Computers and Communications for Developing Countries). Following this part of the technical program, there were one and a half days structured to allow all participants to take part in the discussion of one of eight pre-identified "issues" (described below), with the goal for each "issue group" set as defining problems and action plans for each topic. At the closing of the congress, summaries of the problems identified and action plans suggested were to be presented to the congress attendees and IFIP governing bodies.Anyone who has experience running a conference with this many attendees can imagine what a nightmare organizing such an event might be. Regular conference activities are hard enough to carry off --- what was proposed was adding about two days of7 parallel discussion groups where nobody knew how many people would participate in each or how each group would manage to produce a product (the summary report) in the time allotted. But the general idea is a very compelling one --- given that you have an audience of professionals in a field brought together for the purpose of exchanging ideas, wouldn't it be interesting to have them try to summarize the issues facing their field and provide a vision of how to approach them as a part of the conference?I was interested enough in the general idea to offer to be a part of trying it out. In general the result was something between a great success and a monumental disaster (it did work much better than I thought it would, but it is unclear whether it will be tried again at the next IFIP Congress). I include a summary of the results below, partly because there emerged a strong concern that technology development was proceeding rapidly, but that it was not sufficiently informed by human needs. We are enabling people to work anywhere, anytime, anyplace, but maybe this shouldn't be the ultimate goal.The remainder of this column is derived from a summary Jack Rosenfeld (editor of the IFIP Newsletter) developed from input from various reports gathered from the issue groups by Dr Karen Duncan (Issue Track Organizer). I think that it presents an interesting picture of the concerns of the international information processing community.