It's a week late at least, but I thought I would take some time to post my after OOPSLA thoughts. It was a good conference. Most people take a "big thing" away from OOPSLA every year. I'm not sure what it was for most. For me, it was standing at the back of the "Should We Rename OOPSLA" BOF. There were many luminaries in there, as loud as I might be electronically, I'm not as brave in a real public setting.

The conference seems to be in search of a rebirth. It's a bunch of old people. Still gathering together after the whole thing started years ago as a place for people publishing these weird papers who couldn't get accepted elsewhere and for upstart vendors like ParcePlace to show off their wares and train people.

Interesting statistic is that an average of 1/3 of OOPSLA attendees each year are first time attendees. If there was any level of retention, we would have the fastest growing conference on the face of the earth.

There is movement afoot that the conference become a fedrated gathering. A small group of specialized conferences. One view is that this is a death knell when you go down this path. A bunch of bodies huddling together for survival when they wouldn't have the size to do it themselves. To continue that trend, no one is certain how to bring some of the big offshoot/specialized conferences that have grown out of people who might have once gone to OOPSLA, things like Agile Universe, Ruby Conf, JaveOne, etc to be "part of OOPSLA" again. Those people are only interested in specializing usually. Then there's the ones that claim the reason they come to OOPSLA is to get out of their box ideas, to partake in the cross polination.

Counter to this is the people that claim the only reason they come to OOPLSA anymore is for one of the specialized venues. Dynamic Language Symposium for example. Or PLOP. Or the Squeak BOFs. Or Design Fest. Or the "Onward!" presentations. Some would claim that the conference already is quite federated.

A whole nuther take is the "invasion of the type snatchers." The majority of OOPSLA focus is about type theory of one sort or another. Trying to figure out how to do this cool OO stuff with types still. Herein lies another conflict. A heavy influence of OOPSLA is the acedemic publishing opportunity for post graduate students. OOPSLA provides a forum of peer paper review for them. Yet, non acedemics have found it increasingly hard to get their "wacky" out of the box idea papers submitted. This is after all, an ACM conference.

In complete ignorance, having missed the original impetus about the rename thing, I had joked early on that I wanted the conference split. Colocated, but one half on one side of the street, the other on the other side. I proposed that it be DOOPSLA and STOOPSLA. All us dynamic types would go to DOOPSLA and be doops. The Static Type nuts could go to STOOPSLA and be stoops. I was just kidding around, but there was a hint of truthful frustration to the idea. i was amused to discover my jest actually had a real context behind it when I heard fo the "Shall we rename OOPSLA BOF."

A good many minutes during the BOF went towards what would be the new name. Classical catch 22. How to keep the brand alive, but also breath fresh air into the brand.

I thought about if for a while. And I know what I'd call it. ROOP. Reunion of Object Oriented Programmers. This might sound trite or derogatory. But it's actually a good part of why I go to OOPSLA. I go to exchange ideas in face to face communications with people I have been meeting there for many years. It gets done in the halls and at mealtimes. And the equivalent of "tutorial" education that I get out of this is quite significant as well.

One final thought that came out of this though, was that it's time for another Camp Smalltalk. A good one. More to follow on that idea hopefully.