As a profession whose value is largely realized through computer implementation of the mathematics, models and algorithms we invent, we have a surprisingly small community Web presence. Perhaps this is partly because our acronym is a disjunction; googling "OR" produces a blank search page, while using Yahoo produces a huge number of irrelevant links. More likely it is because although our profession creates Web content, we create little content linked by or intended for use outside of our professions.

The Wikipedia entry for INFORMS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informs), is (as of Jan. 3, 2007) three lines of text plus three links; it includes a request that readers help introduce links in articles on related topics. In contrast, the SIAM, IEEE and ACM entries are of significant length, providing a wealth of information about those societies, as well as numerous links to entries on society activities and participants. Over the next few weeks I will work with the INFORMS staff to augment this entry to more appropriately represent our professional society.

The operations research page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_Research) in Wikipedia gives a reasonable overview of the field and its origins, but at least one of the linked articles would likely be offensive to much of our community. In contrast, the management science entry (http://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_science) is only a few lines, and its main point seems to be distinguishing management science from operations research, as having a "practical, rather than academic" bent. If each reader of this column makes just one small entry or edit, we can create wikipedia content to point to with pride.

The Time article goes on to recognize the evolution of the Internet into "a tool for bringing together small contributions of millions of people and making them matter." The COIN-OR initiative (www.coin-or.org), launched in 2000 to provide a repository for O.R.-related open source software, brings together significant contributions of dozens of people in our field. Its use is growing, particularly amongst graduate students. Coin-OR's Web presence is strong, but it too needs to improve its coverage in Wikipedia. [For more on COIN-OR, see page 62.]

Blogging has become increasingly popular, with daily blogs available on almost every imaginable subject. I personally delight in reading a set of fiber arts blogs on spinning, knitting and weaving, finding irony in the use a high-tech media to discuss a low-tech craft. Our profession has been slow to join the blogging trend, with a few notable exceptions. Mike Trick's blog (http://mat.tepper.cmu.edu/blog/) is the first in our field, and probably the most widely read, perhaps because it is linked from his operations research page (http://mat.gsia.cmu.edu/). The O.R. Applications Blogspot by Robert Grinde collects news clips about O.R. applications (http://orapplications.blogspot.com/), and fractal dimensions (http://fractionph.wordpress.com/) chronicles the graduate studies of Cyrus, a mathematics-turned-engineering student in the Philippines. But our community has few active bloggers and no cross referencing network of blogs.

In contrast, search engines turn up hundreds, perhaps thousands, of relevant "operations research" links, including individual homepages, scholarly articles, course pages and teaching tools, and descriptions of products for researchers and practitioners in our field. I have not attempted an analysis of connectivity of the "OR Web," but casual perusal leads me to believe that our Web consists of a collection of loosely connected, nearly complete graphs, with each nearly complete graph corresponding to the work of an individual or organization.

Social bookmarking, a way to store, classify, share and search links through additional input (tags, ratings, etc.) provided by self-identified experts, is one of the trends underlying the democratization of the Web celebrated in the Time article. This trend should be of interest to our community, both as a new phenomenon for analytic study, and as a vehicle for communicating about our profession. The popular social bookmarking site deli.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/) has no tags for operations research, while StumbleUpon (http://www.stumbleupon.com/) locates a few appropriate sites, but has no expert O.R. "stumblers" to help identify high quality sites for O.R.-minded visitors.

If we are to achieve the potential of our profession on policy, planning and operations in government and industry, then our abilities and achievements must be made visible to those who can and should benefit from them. Operations research is a mystery to most of the world. We, the researchers and practitioners of this art or science or engineering discipline, must take responsibility for articulating its role and value to those outside of our immediate community. We have to enable others to appreciate our work, just as musicians enable their audiences to appreciate music by listening without requiring that they understand the terminology and technicalities associated with composing, performing or recording music. We have to talk about what we do in a way that informs (no pun intended) and engages others from outside our community, keep our internal debates from confusing potential users, and tackle new application areas by molding our capabilities to others' problems, rather than requiring that they learn to use our methods and tools.

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