June, 1999
 
 
 

To: VALUED COLLEAGUES IN THE ADA VENDOR COMMUNITY
 

From: Ben Brosgol (Aonix), SIGAda'99 Exhibits Chair & ACM SIGAda Chair, Brosgol@Aonix.COM
           Hal Hart (TRW), SIGAda'99 Conference Chair & SIGAda Past Chair,Hal.Hart@ACM.ORG

Subject: Ada Vendor Planning for SIGAda'99 Conference/Exhibition/Tutorials
 

We are writing not just to express our excitement about our plans for our annual SIGAda'99 conference/exhibition/tutorials in Redondo Beach (CA) October 17-21, but to enlist unprecedented partnering between SIGAda and the vendor community on our annual conference. We know that everyone agrees that it is to our mutual benefit that there continues to be a strong, focused Ada conference in the U.S. each year. Because of this mutual objective, we welcome your vendor-perspective help and inputs now and as we proceed in our conference organizing over the coming months.

Below we overview unique aspects planned for SIGAda'99 and then propose three areas for all Ada vendors to partner with SIGAda to increase the success of SIGAda'99:

  1. Publicity,
  2. a more economical approach to our Exhibit Hall, and
  3. Sponsorship opportunities.

 

SIGAda'99 PLANNING STATUS:

If you are not already aware, we share with you some of our plans for SIGAda'99 that are already eliciting significant interest from many in the Ada community, causing us to cautiously anticipate an increase in attendance from 200-some at SIGAda'98 in DC last November. BARRY BOEHM (USC), BRAN SELIC (ObjecTime), and JOHN McCORMICK (Univ. of N. Iowa) are already lined up as keynote speakers, and Program Committee Co-Chairs TUCKER TAFT (AverStar) and FRANCO GASPERONI (ACT-Europe) have scoped a conference theme focusing on real-time and distributed classes of systems. These are huge opportunities for Ada (and have frequent overlap with other domains ripe for Ada) because Ada's strengths differentiate Ada from other programming languages in systems with these properties.

Our Call for Participation (CFP) went out early, and was received by most members two months before the April 15 submission due date, correcting an all-too-often mistake with a CFP too close to due dates. And, we introduced online submission for the first time. The first submission was received in mid-February and we ended up with more submissions than last year! And, we had a Preliminary Advance Program ready for distribution by the end of April, with the complete Advance Program including the full technical program scheduled for July in time for mailing 3 full months before the conference. We continue to make our schedules!

Our venue will be the CROWNE PLAZA REDONDO BEACH which is a cozy first-class hotel facing the Pacific and only a 5-minute walk from the popular Redondo Beach Pier, only 7 miles south of LAX. We have obtained an attractive $119 group room rate, less expensive than the hotels SIGAda has chosen the past 3 years. And, we have rolled back "Member" registration fees to Tri-Ada'95 prices ($350 early registration for conference), again returning SIGAda's conference to its status as one of the lowest-priced events of its kind.

There's much more to say about our ahead-of-schedule planning, but you should visit the SIGAda'99 conference website at http://www.acm.org/sigada/conf/sigada99to peruse the evolving conference program and activities.
 
 
 
 

VENDOR PARTNERING:

We are encouraging Ada vendors to participate in SIGAda'99 plans beyond simply signing up as an exhibitor. Our thinking involves 3 areas: (1) Publicity is our immediate request and need, but (2) Exhibit Hall arrangements and (3) Sponsorship options.

  1. PUBLICITY:We request vendor help in publicizing our SIGAda'99 Preliminary Advance Program (PAP), and later the Advance Program. We ask that you now take and use our PAP in any form you desire, or simply notify your customers and mailing lists (and your own employees, many of whom are surely doing valuable publishable/presentable work!) about the conference dates and point them to the conference url. We welcome any means to spread the word -- copy and mail our PAP, extract parts into your newsletters, or simply broadcast a short notice with the url to your email lists. We make available a graphics-free Word version of the CFP for you to use or excerpt at http://www.acm.org/sigada/conf/sigada99/pap.doc, and a PDF version as mailed with graphics at http://www.acm.org/sigada/conf/sigada99/pap.pdf . If you would like to help us publicize the conference and need something else from us, please contact Hal or SIGAda'99 Publicity Chair David Harrison (DHarrison@ACM.ORG). And, look for our Advance Program with the complete selection of technical papers, workshops, tutorials, etc. in July at http://www.acm.org/sigada/conf/sigada99/ap.doc and http://www.acm.org/sigada/conf/sigada99/ap.pdf
      2.  


       

  2. EXHIBIT HALL ECONOMIES(for you!): We have listened to your ideas for a downsized Exhibit Hall approach that could eliminate most of your costs of shipping and staff, dramatically increasing the value/cost ratio in reaching our attendees. The core of our Exhibit Hall change is two-fold: only single 10-foot-wide booths (elegantly dressed including piping & draping with tables we supply if you don't even want to ship your small booth display unit), and reduction of the exhibits period from almost 3 days to just one and a half days. We have discussed this with most of our recent exhibitors, and the consensus is that this replan will avoid large costs for shipping and travel & labor for extra booth staff; and that this will succeed in bringing exhibitor investments in line with the payoff of being at SIGAda's conference. More information (including exhibit hall layout and the application/contract for exhibiting) is available via Ben and by clicking the Exhibiting Opportunities button on the conference website.
      3.  


       

  3. SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES:We are proposing a more consistent list of sponsorship and exhibiting options for SIGAda'99 than in the past. In addition to (or in some cases instead of) previous piece-meal pricing for receptions, Final Program & Proceedings ads, badge lanyards, etc., we propose to establish Platinum/Gold/Silver ($3K/$4K/$5K) levels of sponsorships with appropriate recognition via ad space, acknowledgements on the tote bag, and publicity for your company via the SIGAda and SIGAda'99 websites. The SIGAda'99 Sponsorship Options sheet enumerates our proposal for the benefits associated with each level of sponsorship. These options will be flexible, and can be adjusted to anything unique your company wants to bring to SIGAda. The proposed "Sponsorship Opportunities" sheet is available now from the conference website or directly at http://www.acm.org/sigada/conf/sigada99/exhibit-and-sponsor-fees.html. Note that we will additionally recognize all our Corporate Sponsors who sign up by July 1 on our Advance Program to be mailed in July.
 We hope you are as excited about SIGAda'99 as we are. An experienced conference organizing team has been assembled, including Program Committee Co-Chairs (Tucker Taft and Franco Gasperoni) who are among the best known, most respected Ada technologists in the world, and our Keynote speakers are each recognized as leaders in different parts of the Ada-related technologies communities. Tremendous energy and enthusiasm about SIGAda'99 has been growing inside and outside the conference committee since SIGAda'98. We have already mailed early publicity in the form of a "Preliminary Advance Program" detailing tutorial selections and registration fees to approximately 13,000 members of the Ada community. Our Advance Program, adding full technical session and workshop details is targeted to be mailed by July, 3 months ahead, to approximately 15,000 world-wide.

We hope to see you in October if not before.