APL94 (Antwerp) Conference Reports

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APL 94 Roundup: Impressions of Antwerp by Anthony and Sylvia Camacho

We delayed going to press by a couple of days to get this preliminary report to you. We hope to include a more comprehensive selection ofphotographs and notes in Vector 11.3.

The world having pressed heavily on us during the three months before the Conference, weleft our booking very late. As always we had awkward questions such as howto deliver the delegate copies of Vector, and how to arrange for the British APL Association s promises to the Russian Fundto befulfilled. To all our challenges Rita Peys and the Conference Office responded patiently, promptly, and in impeccable English. We should like to take this opportunity to thank her and herstaff for their support.

The Highlights You discover what wasoutstanding about a conference by listening to how you describeit to others. By this standard the highlight of APL94 was nothing to do with APL:it was the cultural evening which Sylvia will long remember as the oceasion when } laughed so muchJ feared my contact lenses would be washed right out of my eyes . Take my advice, never miss a chance of attending a performanceof The Frivolous Raspberry . This duo did spoofs, take-offs, send- ups, pastiches and grossinjustices to a huge range of music from Schubert Lieder to a 10-minute Traviata which contained bits of every opera you have ever heard in the best Anna Russell tradition ... They pretended to have forgotten the tune of the William Tell overture, and to re-construct it from Phil Benkard s humming!

Asfor the serious Conference business Sylvia was impressed by the energy and success with which the Japanese have been promoting APL,particularly among schoolchildren. Also the continuing work that Walter Spunde has received funding for in Australia; his down-to-earth advice on teaching undergraduates should be heeded. In addition the competence and enthusiasm of the Russian students makes the continued support of the APL community there seem well worth while. But the highlight was to watch and listen while Gérard Langlet issued challenges to several scientific disciplines with his inimitable verve, and of course #\.

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The Venue The Conference Venue, very imposing and elegant, was perhaps not quite in keeping with the informality of most delegates to these APL occasions. However, the opening plenary session wasintriguing and very aptly reflected the artistic surroundings. The Province House is a very grand provincial government building. The plenary theatre was huge, with excellent facilities (except that, as usual, the screen display wasn t sharp enough). The other rooms were also comfortable and well-furnished. The corridors and open spaces were decorated with works of art, and there were attendants to prevent you from taking coffee whereit might damage the decorations if spilled. The Province House closed early so the sessions at the end of the day could not be extended - people in distant hotels had to leave early to be sure they would not miss the bus. The meeting place was 15 minutes walk away 50, except for events that took place there, it was not much used.

The delegates stayed in five hotels. Some were within walking distance. The cheapest (where we stayed) was about half an hour away by bus; we were pleased with it. ] am sure thefacilities could have handled a conference of three a times the numbers: there were 164 namesin thelist of participants and maybe few people turned up atthelast minuteor for single days.

The Programmeand Presentations Fair comment on the programme would only be possibleif three people between them attended every session. 1 fear my choice may have been unfortunate. about APLers on the whole need more rehearsal than they get, and care toolittle larger their audience. Many times someone from the audience had to ask for a font on the display or to focus the overhead projector .

of Theplenary sessions were mixed. The opening plenary wasa brilliant survey symboli sm and ideas.It wasfull of superfici al or the loose connection between deep ideas according to your point of view. The consequences of the symbols I are the symbols of the consequences. [L. von Bertalanffy 1965] For my part cannot see howtheinsightsofthe artist can produce useful scientific advances . the In hindsight one can say Ah: he foresaw what Einstein discovered but, like prophecies of the I-Ching, you never know whatthey really foretell until it has happened.

The panel on the future of APL wasa disaster a disconnected set of comments by clever people, some of which had some force but noresolution of any d disagreements and no possibilities of reaching any. One rather wondere whetherPhil Benkard wasrightto say the future of APLisits past.

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Joseph De Kerf opens the Conference Alain Delmotte introducing the Programme

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Other plenaries were sales pitches (Soliton, Arthur Whitney, Dyadic, Iverson Software, Manugistics and IBM)orhistory (APLin Japan and Origins of APL2).

The SigAPL Meeting The open SigAPL meeting was introduced in a very upbeat way by Dick Bowman. SigAPL have done wonders. QuoteQuad appears on time or even early. The bank balance is rising. Membership has been stabilised (i.e, it is no longer falling). There is a location for APL95 (San Antonio), Regrettably there wasnothing after the introduction. Nobody knewthe bank balance or how many members there are or what procedure is used to choose a location for APL96.

The Banquet The banquet, boisterous and with excellent food, was also the occasion for the presentation of the SigAPL Outstanding Achievement Award.

The restaurant was a long way outside Antwerp in a restored farmhouse. There was champagne(as at the Welcome reception), the food wasexcellent, and as always the company was marvellous. Stuart Yarus presented the SigAPL Outstanding Achievement Award to Donald McIntyre. The audience was obviously delighted by the choice, and Donald charmed them with his response. Apart from having done so much for APL andJ, Donald is very well liked, has done a great deal unpaid, without hope or expectation of gain, and has no enemies. Many APLersarealtruistic and like to see it recognised. It wasalso nice to hear the J work that Donald has donein thecitation.

The banquet was very expensive at £52 a head. Indeed,the conference in general was a very expensive one and I suspect some APLers who would have had to pay for themselves may have been deterred by theprice. I nearly was, myself.

The Arrangements Practically everything ran very smoothly. Those in the know attributed this to Rita Peys and her secretary. We owe them our thanks and also thanks to Alain Delmotte for organising the programme.

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The IBM Stand: Eke van Batenburg, Ray Polivka, and Dieter Lattermann

Pete Donnelly and John Daintree manthe Gérard Langlet at the Binary Algebra Dyadic Stand Workshop

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Ilya Mironov (age 18), Ludmilla Lemagnen (organiser of the Russian Fund) and Victor Bargatchev (age 16)

Donald McIntyre accepting the Iverson Michel Dumontier with an alternative Award solution

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Reflections of Another by Ray Cannon T saw a lotofreflections of Antwerp, since it rained every day I was there. Luckily I did not go for the sight-seeing, but rather for the APL, or rather, the APLers. I made a few newfriends, and met many old ones, but sadly many were missing. Mostofthe papers covered the same old ground but there were a few papers breaking new ground, in particular Pavel Luksha s Probabilistic Studies of I CHINGwith the Help of APL and Gérard Langlet's The APL Theory of Human Vision .

Asfor the Vendors, in the Windowsarena Manugistics and Dyadic were battling it out, both giving good accounts of themselves. IBM appeared to be retreating into its OS/2 comer while Iverson Software's J for Windows seemsto be gaining ground. J Locales vs Dyadic Namespaces appears to be the next big fight, oris it between J and Manugistics over control structures?

The closing session was Acquisition and Processing Data from Normal and Cancer Cells by the Nobel prize winner Dr Ivar Giaever. As an APL consultant I found this session very interesting. More importantly however, it contained two messages to all APL vendors. If you wantto sell APL (or J for that matter) to scientists doing research you must havedirect IEEE support and you must have a Plot primitive. (This last point about a plot primitive was also made by Dr Walter Spunde in his paper on the The Impact ofAPL on First Year Mathematics .)

Andfinally a few key phrases.

The consequenceof the symbolsis the symbols of the consequence.

Peace in our time, stop the war between APLs.

Lots of Little Trojan horses in our code,

Vendors saying that their Windows Driver was easy to learn is a bit like the Nepalese Tourist Board saying:

We havelots of very nice mountains, and theyareall very easy to climb.

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