President's Desk
Practice Makes Near Perfect Conference
INFORMS President
Brenda Dietrich
Dietric@us.ibm.com
I've just returned from the INFORMS Practice Conference in Vancouver. I've attended all seven of the practice conferences, and I think this one was almost perfect. I say "almost," not because of any specific flaw, but because I lack a proof of optimality. The city of Vancouver was beautiful; the conference facilities were perfect for a group of our size; the technical session were appropriate, well prepared and presented (and well attended); the plenary talks were informative and entertaining; the reception and banquet were well produced; and the participants were interesting and engaging. It was great to see many familiar faces, to meet students and young researchers, and to interact with attendees from other professions who had discovered the benefit that O.R. could bring to their organizations. The conference advisory committee and its chair, Jack Levis, together with the INFORMS meeting staff, did a fantastic job. Attendance was a record-breaking 460, bringing requests from some participants to cap attendance at 500 to preserve the conference feel.
At the post conference dinner with the advisory council, I reflected on the progress that had been made in the past seven years. I first became involved in the practice conference following my election to the INFORMS board as VP for Practice. The decision to hold a meeting focused on practice had been made prior to my joining the board, but issues such as length, format and participation had not been settled. The meeting was to be very different from the INFORMS annual meeting and its predecessors, the ORSA/TIMS joint meetings. The goal was to have a conference for listeners rather than for speakers; a conference in which the value came from learning about the experiences of others rather than describing one's own work; a conference in which an O.R. graduate who had been employed in industry or government for 10 years could get a quick update on new advances in the field; a conference in which a manager with an O.R. problem could find possible solutions, described in the language of business, rather than just the language of O.R. It was to be, quite simply, unlike anything INFORMS had done before.
In addition to providing a new product for a new audience, the conference had to provide value to, or at least not disenfranchise, the existing INFORMS practice communities including the Roundtable and CPMS, the tools vendors and the academic community. An advisory council including representatives from each of these groups was assembled; I was persuaded to chair the council. Laying out a proposed program was relatively easy. We wanted tutorials on methods (by academics) and tutorials on tools (by providers); we wanted case studies on specific use of O.R. in practice; since it was planned in 2000, we wanted some "new economy" talks; and we wanted to incorporate the Edelman competition as a track rather than as the stand-alone meeting it had been in prior years. Explaining the new format to potential speakers was a bit more challenging, especially when we insisted that slides be provided well in advance. But despite the difficulties, we assembled a five-track program with three plenaries, two receptions and networking lunches.
Attendance at the San Diego meeting was 265, including one professor who arrived midday Monday, expecting the usual format. At the INFORMS board meeting the previous Sunday, the board approved two more practice meetings to be held in the spring of 2002 and 2003. These conferences built upon the format used in San Diego; attendance was 279 and 344, respectively. In early 2004, the INFORMS board of directors voted to continue the Practice Conference as a regular INFORMS meeting. The fourth practice meeting was held in Cambridge, Mass., in 2004, immediately following the celebration of the 50th anniversary of MIT's OR Center. The attendance at the 2004, 2005 and 2006 meetings hovered just under 400. In 2005, the INFORMS Professional Colloquium was created to provide graduate students with a brief introduction to industrial careers; 2006 launched a banquet dinner for the recognition of Edelman competition finalist and winners.
The Vancouver conference included a track on O.R. in the healthcare industry, and a number of healthcare professionals attended the conference. The Edelman award was given to Sloan Kettering Memorial Cancer Center for an application of optimization to cancer treatment (see page 18). All of the healthcare attendees I spoke with commented on the quality of the conference and on the relative obscurity of O.R. in their profession. I thanked them for the first comment, and asked how we should respond to the second. They made it clear that it is our responsibility — they can't be expected to seek out something they don't know exists.
As a profession we, management scientists, operations researchers, applied mathematicians or whatever we choose to call ourselves, are responsible for making our capabilities known and accessible to other professions. We can revitalize the INFORMS speakers bureau and provide articulate ambassadors to other professions' conferences and graduate seminars. We can provide venues in our existing journals for the publication of accessible applications-related work, including case studies on the use of known models in new domains. We can use our social networks to communicate the usefulness of our profession and connect potential users to providers. We can follow the model established by the Vancouver conference advisory board, and reach out to local enterprises where we hold conferences, extending our visibility through networking and personal communication.
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