Just to follow up: Robert Bernecky said he felt impressed by some of the people putting together http://www.sable.mcgill.ca/array/.
So I looked into what the costs and schedule would be like, to send him there. I think we are looking at about $2500 for the trip, and we would have to raise most of that in the next couple weeks, if we want to pull this off. So that ideally means we would need a corporate sponsorship of some sort. Some of us might be inclined to donate that personally, but for that kind of money I think it might be good if some corporation that wants a small advertising benefit gets the credit. He would need to submit a paper by April 2. The biggest part of the cost is air transport. The next biggest component is the cost of hotel. And there's a bit extra to cover other costs associated with the presentation. Also, this is just an estimate, but if his trip needs more than this, I'll plan on covering any shortfalls, myself. Two weeks is not a lot of time to make these kinds of financial arrangements. But note that we do not need the money in two weeks, we just need to have confidence that the money would be made available in a couple months. It would be embarrassing if he submitted a paper on our behalf and then we left him to cover all of the costs himself. So, that leaves us with a new problem: what benefits does J offer to a corporate sponsor. Of course, there's the obvious and traditional benefits - being seen as active in a growing computing field, having contacts with people engaged in researching and developing these kinds of applications, and reaching the students who will later be interested in this kind of work. It should also be good for the J community, just to become actively involved with the other communities of people attending this conference. But it's worth repeating: two weeks might not be long enough to engage corporate interest. As an aside it might also be worthwhile for some of us here to buy a sigplan membership to get access to the proceedings (it's $25 - a good investment if you find the idea of developing array programming tools entertaining, maybe not such a good idea if you want this kind of information handed you on a platter). This is independent of whether or not we raise enough money to send someone to represent us at the conference. Thanks, -- Raul On Thu, Feb 20, 2014 at 3:07 PM, Raul Miller <[email protected]> wrote: > I've talked with Robert Bernecky about his interest, and he seemed > optimistic about the possibility. > > He also wanted to establish a clear definition of what he should provide, > in return for sponsorship (and he made a few suggestions), and expressed > some concerns the conference itself (which he is looking into). > > Of course, this is all still tentative right now, but hopefully we will > reach a go/no-go decision point soon enough to either allow a clean > shutdown on this plan or to allow for adequate preparation for the > conference. > > Thanks, > > -- > Raul > > > On Thu, Feb 20, 2014 at 1:41 PM, Nollaig MacKenzie < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> >> I would be willing to contribute a bit toward sending >> an emissary to the workshop. >> >> -- >> Nollaig MacKenzie >> http://www.yorku.ca/nollaig >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm >> > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
