TOOLS Europe '96 Call for Papers

[Jean-Marc Nerson]

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....@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: <to...@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: <to...@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 |
| |
|_______________________________________________________________________|

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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.
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