Date: 17 Aug 95 Technology of Object-Oriented Languages and Systems TOOLS EUROPE '96 CONFERENCE AND EXHIBITION FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS Paris - Palais des Congres, France, February 26-29, 1996 Program Chair: Richard Mitchell (University of Brighton) Tutorial, Workshop and Panel Chair: Jean-Marc Nerson (SOL, Paris) Conference Chair: Bertrand Meyer (ISE Inc., Santa Barbara) Held every year since 1989, TOOLS EUROPE is the largest and most important European conference entirely devoted to Object-Oriented technology and its applications. TOOLS EUROPE is characterized by a double emphasis: techni- cal quality and relevance to practitioners. This year's conference will continue this tradition. As with previous TOOLS conferences, the Proceedings will be published by Prentice Hall. This provides authors with the guarantee that accepted papers will have the widest possible international distribution. The conference will combine invited talks by experts of world repute from both industry and academia; tutorials on a wide range of O-O topics at the beginner, intermediate and advanced levels; panels on the issues of direct interest to the community; an exhibition of products and services featuring the latest development in the field; and technical papers selected from the contributions submitted in response to the present Call for Papers. SUBMISSIONS All submissions (papers, panels, and tutorials) will be refereed and judged both on technical quality and on relevance to practitioners. A non-exhaustive list of suggested topics for the general conference includes: + O-O development and management. + O-O databases. + Reusability: achievements, policies, production and distribution of high-quality standard components. + Reports of experiences. + Teamworking + O-O concurrency and distribution. TOOLS EUROPE 96 will devote a whole track to the issue of migration to O-O in small or large organization, integration with legacy systems, coupling O-O with other traditional techniques, extending or complementing O-O with non O-O models. Contributions are expressly sought in this area. A special ``migration to O-O'' track will include workshop(s), tutorials, panel discussions, and featured speakers. All submitted papers should be in the range of 8 to 15 single-spaced pages and written in English. Six copies of each submission should be sent by October 10, 1995 to: TOOLS Europe '96, Attn: Dr. Richard Mitchell Department of Computing University of Brighton Lewes Road, Brighton BN2 4GJ United Kingdom E-mail: <Richard.Mitchell@brighton.ac.uk> Fax +44 1 273 642405 Proposals for tutorials, panels and workshops are also solicited. One page abstract should be sent by October 10, 1995 to: TOOLS Europe '96, Attn: Dr. Jean-Marc Nerson 104 rue Castagnary 75015 Paris France E-mail: <tools@eiffel.fr> Fax: +33 1 45 32 58 81 Note: E-mail submissions are only acceptable for workshop, tutorial and panel proposals. For such submissions, you should receive an e-mail acknowledgment within one week. To maximize their chances of acceptance, prospective authors should read the ``GUIDELINES FOR TOOLS AUTHORS'' included at the end of this announcement. IMPORTANT DATES Submission deadline: October 10, 1995. Notification of acceptance: November 25, 1995. Final manuscripts due (papers): January 10, 1996. Tutorial material due: January 31, 1996. PANEL AND TUTORIAL PROPOSALS All panel proposals should include a description of the pro- posed topic, the name, address and brief biography of the proposed panel chair, and the list of expected panelists. Important: it is the responsibility of the panel proposer to secure the acceptance of all expected panelists before sending the proposal. Although there is no fixed format for tutorial proposals, any such proposal should include the following elements: a summary of the proposed tutorial; an indication of its level (beginner, intermediate, advanced); a biography of the presenter(s), including a list of any earlier tutorials presented; and any supplementary materials (such as copies of publications by the presenter) which can help evaluate the proposal. Tutorials at TOOLS are normally one half-day (four hours including a break). The following types of tutorials are particularly sought for TOOLS EUROPE 96: Any presentation of a topic of high potential interest and not yet covered in conferences. Any tutorial with a strong practical content, or based on significant industrial developments. A non-partisan survey of the major solutions available in a certain area (tools, environments, methods, languages, standards ...), based as much as possible on actual experience rather than just knowledge though the literature. An in-depth, non-partisan critical survey of a specific solution (in any area as defined above) which has attracted much attention and is of interest to a wide seg- ment of the community. OTHER O-O MEETINGS IN CONNECTION WITH TOOLS Many special interest groups on object-oriented topics use the opportunity of TOOLS to organize one of their regular or exceptional events. Examples in previous years include meetings of user groups for C++, Eiffel, NextSTEP, Smalltalk OMT, and others, as well as standards committees. Such meetings this year can take place on Friday, March 1, or Saturday, March 2, 1996. As in previous conferences, the TOOLS EUROPE '96 organizers will help find a room. The events will also be advertised in the final TOOLS program, of which several hundred thousand copies will be mailed in late 1995. This form can be sent to: TOOLS EUROPE '96 104, rue Castagnary 75015 PARIS - FRANCE Tel: +33 1 45 32 58 80 Fax: +33 1 45 32 58 81 E-mail: <tools@tools.com> For paper copies please type or attach a business card. _________________________________________________________________________ |Last Name: | |____________________________________________________________ | | | |First Name: | |____________________________________________________________ | | | |Company Name: | |____________________________________________________________ | | | |Company Address: | |____________________________________________________________ | | | |City, state, zip, country: | |____________________________________________________________ | |____________________________________________________________ | |Phone: ___________________________ Fax: ___________________________ | | | |I intend to: [ ] submit a paper [ ] submit a tutorial | | [ ] submit a workshop proposal [ ] submit a panel proposal| |Title: | |____________________________________________________________ | |____________________________________________________________ | | | |[ ] My company is interested in exhibiting. Please send me an | | exhibitor information kit | | | |_______________________________________________________________________| =========================================================================== SOME GUIDELINES FOR PROSPECTIVE TOOLS AUTHORS Thank you very much for considering the submission of a paper to TOOLS. The following informal notes are meant to help you make sure that your proposal will have the best chance of acceptance by the program committee. General TOOLS is a scientific conference with emphasis on applications. This means that contributions should be scientifically valid and at the same time carry significant interest for industry practitioners. The program committee's task is to build a high-quality conference program which will be interesting and informative for conference participants as well as readers of the Proceedings. In other words, the program committee acts as a ``consumer's advocate'' for these two groups of (tough) consumers. Your task is to convince the committee that your paper, if selected, will please that audience, and that it should be made part of the program. Remember, the Committee is not so much trying to ``judge'' you as it is thinking about how it will be judged by its constituency - attendees and readers. One more general note - about the OO in TOOLS. The Conference's theme is Object-Oriented technology. While there is no universally accepted definition of what ``object- orientedness'' exactly means, professionals in the field usually agree that they ``recognize it when they see it''. We assume that you are one of these professionals and have no doubt that your contribution fits within the general framework of object-oriented methods, techniques, tools, languages, systems, libraries and environments. Required components Any contribution should include the following components: *Introduction stating precisely the problem addressed in the paper. *Mention of and comparison with other relevant work, including bibliography. *Clear explanation of the impact of object-oriented technology on the work described, and/or conversely. *Description of concepts or experiences; if a system is described, basic specification, design or implementation decisions, major problems encountered, nature of solutions devised. *Conclusion assessing the results of the work described and its limitations. Conceptual papers Any contribution describing new concepts, or new aspects of existing concepts, should emphasize the potential relevance of these concepts to practitioners. Not all the concepts described need be new. The novelty may be in a better presentation of known concepts, or in newly discovered consequences. In all cases, the paper should make it clear what is new with the author and what is not. Experience reports Any paper describing a practical experience (e.g. application of a certain method, language, tool to a certain problem) should describe: *The exact elements used (e.g. version X of environment Y). *Any external constraints that may have affected the outcome (e.g. hardware choices, available manpower and other resources, level of expertise, deadlines). *Differences and similarities with standard practice for other projects (the state of the art), especially within the same organization. *The place of the project in the author's organization (e.g. experiment in a research laboratory, pilot project with no immediate consequence on the organization's operational activities, full-scale operational development). *Evaluation of results obtained so far (acceptance by the organization, use as basis for new developments, rejection of results, etc.), indicating what criteria where used for evaluation (authors' opinion only, management assessment) and whether the evaluation is subjective only or is based on more systematic criteria (e.g. metrics). *The brand of O-O technology used and its role in the experience. *An analysis of benefits and limitations of the experience, with emphasis on lessons to be drawn for similar undertakings by others. Extended abstracts TOOLS accepts submissions in the form of extended abstracts in lieu of full papers. To avoid the impression of ``hand-waving'' that an extended abstract may sometimes give, please keep in mind the following if you decide to make your submission in this form: *Include the most salient parts of the full paper in the extended abstract. *Don't make promises. The program committee will judge on the basis of what it sees in the extended abstract, not of what the extended abstract says will be in the full paper. By the very definition of the notion of extended abstract, some elements of the full paper will be missing; what is there should be convincing enough that the program committee will trust that you will fill these missing parts at a high level of quality. *The time imparted between notification of acceptance and submission of the final camera-ready copy is invariably short. Do not leave out any part that you would not have time to finish. If your submission is an extended abstract, it should be marked clearly as such to avoid any confusion. Quality of the English The Program Committee realizes that English, the official language of TOOLS, is a foreign language for many authors. It is the Committee's responsibility, however, to make sure that listeners to your presentation at the Conference, and readers of your paper in the Proceedings, will be able to benefit from your work - which implies that they will understand it. You are not expected to write like F. Scott Fitzgerald (and you are strongly advised against writing like William Faulkner). But your English should be grammatically correct, and understandable by competent professionals worldwide. The last comment, by the way, also means that if you are a native English speaker you should stay away from colloquialisms as well as pompous or conceited style. If you are uncertain as to the acceptability of a certain term or phrase, try to find a native speaker to help you. If this is impossible, go for the simplest and the clearest form of expression, using a good grammar and dictionary. Regardless of whether or not you are a native speaker, there is no excuse for spelling mistakes. Your computing system almost certainly has a spelling checker; use it. Remember, the program committee cannot accept your contribution if it is not confident that you can produce an acceptable paper for inclusion in the conference proceedings. Both the British and American brands of English are acceptable (this note uses the American form). But you must be consistent: if you use center (American for centre), then do not write behaviour (British for behavior). The rest is up to you. Thanks again, and the best of our encouragements. The TOOLS program committee. ===========================================================================