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STIC Discussion Session

Perhaps put a list on STIC of conferences at which it would be useful to make Smalltalk presentations, roughly classified (decision-makers go to this one, relevant Smalltalk app could be presented at this one, etc.). There are several smalltalkers (myself for one) who could present but who are sure to miss the deadline or fail to select a good conference unless advised.

There is the audience of decision-makers, there is the audience of non-smalltalk programmers and there is the audience of smalltalkers whose morale need to be raised. Only a small proportion (people quoted one in five and 3 in 47 of smalltalkers at their companies) read c.l.s and come to Smalltalk Solutions.

STIC could be an umbrella for a local Smalltalk user groups attending a nearby conference. The local group could attend and present something relevant that mentioned Smalltalk. STIC could review it and let them use the STIC name to give them greater cachet. STIC could also add demos and interest detail to news releases. It could maintain a group blog.

Proposal: calendar of events on STIC website. People email details of events, etc. (e.g. local user group presentations, Smalltalk at conferences). As well as being useful, this would keep the STIC site active. (Peter Lount suggested added more stuff to smalltalk.org as well.) Is there a risk of duplicating whysmalltalk? Should that be the frequently changing site that holds the calendar (and alerts you if STIC or smalltalk.org has new stuff)? Update FAQs: some FAQs are quite old. People could email suggested additions and changes to the FAQs and STIC could vet them and insert them. Ask the current FAQ owners to pass their authority to STIC.

STIC could coordinate: when anyone is visiting a location near a local Smalltalk user group for work reasons, they could enquire via STIC whether there is local interest. The visitor might as well give a talk as sit in a hotel room of an evening. Equally, STIC could let vendors know that potential audiences existed in certain cities.

Some people teach Smalltalk. The local XP group is often involved with local schools and are not committed to particular languages; that's a good way in. Squeak eToys is good. David Buck has neat VW code to animate a puppy dog, controlled from workspace, also ray-trace code defined in Smalltalk, etc. STIC could make such presentations available.

Negative and very inaccurate press from e.g. Gartner group, can be very harmful; David Buck described a case where Gartner told a company that Smalltalk was dead, no new vendors, no new releases. Five (count them!!) Smalltalk vendors released new versions within a year of that report but Gartner stated that although they were wrong on specific points in the remark, they would not back down because it was their corporate strategy. The only reply is to be sure to make management know of other analysts; there are some that are very positive about Smalltalk. STIC should find quotable phrases from friendly analysts so that people in companies can guide management to those analysts. (BTW, Gartner wrote reports only a few years ago saying Smalltalk was the wave of the future.)

We should ride the dynamic language wave that is coming. Python, Ruby, etc. - and Smalltalk. Arguing about the past interests noone outside the community but riding the dynamic wave to say that Smalltalk is the best dynamic language has potential to interest many people (several people quoted remarks heard at Python groups, etc., in support of this).

Java started by claiming to be a simpler, more like Smalltalk, C++ ("It's better than C++ and while it may not have everything Smalltalk does, it's good enough" was the phrase with which its supporters closed many an argument). However Java has become more and more verbose till Java 1.5 adds generics and now it is as verbose as C++. The old argument is no longer true even in its own terms.

Could we restart The Smalltalk Report? It does need serious money and paper publishing is dropping. Paper still has a certain cachet, but several doubted the value of this. Monthly or bi-monthly would be costly but could we do it annually? Make it the StS call-for-papers plus articles. It is hard to do (Squeak tried and it fell off). Bruce proposed making it a digest of stuff; its easier to cut stuff out than create it. He also suggested rotating editorial duty (has worked in other language-specific user groups).