~iiiIiiI~@iIiiiiiiiiiiiii@@~iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiIiiiiiii~@@iiiiiiiIiiiiiiiiiiii~@ii~iIi~ii[iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii~i~iiI~iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii~@!ii~i@iiiiiiiiiIiiiiiiiiii~i~ii~i@iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii@~ii~ii~iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii most people outside FIG. All in all, I was pleased at the composition, though not at the quantity. However, the quantity The first annual SIGForth was exactly as I estimated at the time of the late mailing. Real Time workshop just Makes me feel like I knew what I was doing. completed. From shaky preWe also held the first official SIGForth members meeting. SIGFORTH '89 beginnings the conference Having spent all day in closely timed presentations I did not WORKSHOP was a splendid technical feel like keeping too tight a reign on the meeting, hence we SUMMARY success though it was somedid not cover nearly all the needed topics. However, several what less successful finanReal T i m e useful things were achieved. Several useful suggestions Software Engineering cially. There were 27 which came up at the meeting have been incorporated into attendees in all, with 31 this newsletter. presentations, more than ample to fill the noon Friday to We discussed the plans for next year's workshop, includnoon Sunday schedule. Just prior to the workshop though, ing whether or not we should have one. Larry Forsley sugthis was not the case. gested we try to annex ourselves to other existing ACM Due primarily to delays in typesetting and printing, the conferences. Gary Feierbach volunteered to investigate this call for papers was not mailed until about eight weeks possibility. Howard Harkness volunteered to lead the orbefore the workshop. This reduced the attendance sigganization of next year's workshop. He offered the Dalnificantly. Many individuals could not either budget or las/Fort Worth area as the location and suggested the end of prepare for the workshop. Also, workshop and conference atFebruary as the time. Workshop plans will proceed, however tendees seem to be a procrastinating lot. At two weeks we may dispense with the expense and trouble if we can before the workshop, only 8 paid registrations had been join enough other conferences. I personally prefer to have at received along with just a handful of papers. We were least one workshop of our own. seriously considering cancelling the workshop, except that Some information and direction was gathered on the 1) we had promises from over 20 people to attend and 2) projects. A few news items collected are listed elsewhere in we had a gentlemen from Germany flying in whom we did this issue. Rick van Norman volunteered (was volunteered?) not want to disappoint. A push was organized to garner to contact IEEE about the availability of information to more attendees and ensure that promises made would be enable us to contact Electorial Engineering and Mechanical kept. Everyone attending was asked to bring a paper. VirtualEngineering department heads to determine if they are interly everyone came through. We actually had more papers ested in Forth. Tom Hand will be looking into the possibility than time to comfortably present them! of holding a workshop to teach educators how to teach The technical and presentation quality was very good. Forth. He will be looking into an NSF grant to cover Some even excellent. We had planned to have pre-publicaworkshop and travel expenses in addition to finding venfion proceedings available to the attendees, but, since we dors who will offer software and/or hardware to schools at had very few papers, this idea was abandoned. The publishreduced rates. [] ed proceedings should be available through ACM within three months. During the workshop, I gave a presentation titled SIGForth: Why We Are whose content was very similar to my column in this issue. At the end I performed a short survey with some pleasing and interesting results. Of the 24 people PORM IG R G A MN in attendance at the time of the survey, 21 were FIG memBEGIN bers, 7 were IEEE members, 10 were ACM members and 21 BEGIN were SIGForth members (albeit many were brand new). For 9 this was their first Forth workshop, 4 sometimes attend BEGIN FORML at Asilomar, and 13 sometimes attend Rochester. BEGIN One first heard about the workshop through the Dr. Dobb's DESIGN SATISFIED? Journal ad, four from the Forth Dimensions ad, one from the ACM ad, 10 from the direct mailing, 7 from word of mouth, UNTIL and one from GENIE. N W O EWRITE COMPILESOK? E CD With over one-third of the attendees being at their first UNTIL Forth workshop and over three-fourth's being or having become SIGForth members, I think the workshop was quite DEBUG RUNSOK? successful in these areas. I would have hoped that more of UNTIL the attendees would not be FIG members (only one-eighth EXHAUSTED? 15HOURDAY? OR were not), though all FIG members received the direct mailing and thus had a far, far better chance of responding than UNTIL ; ~ George Shaw TheDevelopment Cycle:

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