The AITP Annual National Collegiate Conference -- which is quickly becoming recognized as one of the most successful student conferences in the country -- has once again broken its attendance record. Mr. Kevin Jetton, the Conference Planner, had the following to say:

"All attendees and guests were truly impressed and dazzled by what AITP can do and is doing! The Friday keynote address by H. Ross Perot was truly outstanding with a crowd estimated at over 700 including a parade of media representatives and photographers. A full day of conference breakout sessions, the largest job fair ever and contest events kept the attendees rather busy all over the University of Texas at Arlington campus. On Saturday, Bob McDowell with Microsoft gave yet another impressive keynote address followed with another full day of breakout sessions, panel discussions, paper presentations and the job fair. A dynamic awards banquet topped off the most successful AITP National Collegiate Conference ever with nearly 800 in attendance including all of the AITP national association officers and the AITP Region 3 officers.

Planning has already started for the 5th annual AITP National Collegiate Conference to be held in Tampa, Florida March 30 through April 1, 2000 wherein the University of Tampa is the local campus and student chapter host. Additionally, an official letter of interest and intent was provided by the DeVry Institute of Technology - Chicago to host the 2001 event."

Total registrants numbered 754, and an additional 65 guests, including the EDSIG Board of Directors, put the total in attendance at 819. An impressive 85 colleges and universities were represented. Twenty four student page Web pages, 53 C++ teams, 81 Visual Basic teams, 47 Webmaster teams, and 73 COBOL teams competed vigorously for school pride and prize money. Regardless of placement, all contestants were winners.

Much thanks must go to Conference Planner, Kevin Jetton, and Conference Chairman and Past EDSIG Secretary, Buzz Hensel for doing a terrific job.

Mr. Perot aimed his remarks at the nearly 700 students in attendance. He spoke of his early years with the U.S. Navy and IBM Corporation, and how he went about forming his own business, Electronic Data Systems (EDS), into what would become one of the nation's leading computer services organizations, which was eventually purchased by General Motors.

He advised students to take the long view toward building one's career. "Don't have money as your primary goal. Strive for excellence through hard work, determination, devotion to serving the needs of the customer and creativity of thought, and the money will follow as a by product." He recounted his struggles to get EDS off the ground in which he was unsuccessful in his first seventy-seven customer calls before finally landing his first contract. He stressed the importance of "thinking outside of the box."

The conference itself will feature four principle speakers (including Kevin W. Bowyer, an IEEE Fellow from the University of South Florida and C. Dianne Martin of the NSF), a full program of refereed papers, selected panels on topics such as IS model curricula, distance learning, and gender issues in IS education, birds of a feather sessions, and abundant vendor displays.

This year's ISECON will take place in parallel with the AITP Annual Conference, which will be held at the nearby Westin O'Hare Hotel also in Rosemont, Illinois. Several joint events have been scheduled, including an "Octoberfest" reception. Further details will appear in the June issue of EDSIG Newsletter. For conference registration information, please refer to the conference Web page at isecon.dsu.edu.

The EDSIG Board held a full day meeting at the University of Texas at Arlington during the National Collegiate Conference. All Board members were in attendance. They are:

• Jack Russell (Tarleton State Univ.)-President
• Bill Tastle (Ithaca College)-Vice President
• Margaret Thomas (Ohio Univ.)-Secretary
• Al Harris (Appalachian St. Univ.)-Treasurer
• Stuart Varden (Pace University)-Membership
• David Feinstein (Univ. of S. Alabama)-Director
• John Reynolds (Wayland Baptist U.)-Director
• Nancy Thomson (NW Missouri St. U.)-Director
• Jerry Wagner (Cal Poly Univ., Pomona)-Director
• Dave Zolzer (Our Lady of the Lake U.)-Director

Several important proposals were presented, discussed and approved. One of particular interest was the proposal by Director David Feinstein that ISECON follow a three year planning cycle. This would add continuity to ISECON planning. Further, the Conference Chair for a given year would be assisted and advised by the immediate past Conference Chair and the Conference Chair for the following year. Tentative locations and Conference Chairs for the next three years are as follows:

• ISECON'2000 in Philadelphia, PA
  (Conference Chair: Stuart Varden)

• ISECON'2001 in San Francisco, CA
  (Conference Chair: Jerry Wagner)

• ISECON'2002 in Dallas, TX
  (Conference Chair: Dave Zolzer)

It was also agreed that the EDSIG Bylaws need to be revisited to straighten out some problems in wording and to clarify certain points that are ambiguous or incomplete. Secretary Margaret Thomas and Directors John Reynolds and Jerry Wagner are leading this effort.

Several EDSIG Officer and Board positions will need to be filled for next year. The Board extends an invitation to any EDSIG member who is interested in having a positive impact on Information Systems education to consider running for a Board vacancy. In this way, the organization will continue to grow and revitalize itself with fresh ideas and points of views. Those interested are asked to email EDSIG Secretary, Margaret Thomas, at thomas@topdog.cs.ohiou.edu. Board members are expected to attend three Board meetings per year.

The new line, however, was beset with a myriad of problems, mostly on the software end. In particular, OS/360 development was way behind schedule and ultimately would cost nearly 500 million dollars over a five year period before it was running satisfactorily. Fred Brooks, the OS/360 project director, would later escape the pressures of large software projects to the University of North Carolina where he wrote his classic book The Mythical Man-Month. A major theme of the book is that a complex task such as software development, is qualitatively different from routine repetitive tasks such as that found in a factory assembly line. Thus, unlike factory work, a programming task that would take one progammer six months to complete cannot be shortened to a month by assigning six people to the job. In fact, doing so would likely lengthen the time it would take to complete the job.

One of the members of the System/360 line was, however, substantially different from the others -- the 360 model 67 -- which was announced in August, 1965. This was a machine designed to support timesharing and featured the "timesharing system" (TSS) software. At the time, timesharing was considered to be a rather novel idea that would be of interest to only a small customer base, such as universities and research labs.

The judgment of history would say that IBM's gamble paid off handsomely, securing continued dominance in the computer industry for another two decades. In fact, most of the basic machine architecture reminds intact in today's line of IBM mainframe products.