Forum dress rehearsal: behind the scenes - includes a related article on the format followed by the Forum, and a related article on the purpose of office automation - director's script for the 1991 platforms for Computing Forum

RELease 1.0, Feb 25, 1991 by Esther Dyson

This is the director's script for the 1991 platforms for Computing (PC) Forum, "Beyond the desktop: Networks, notepads and legacies." In it we outline the flow and set the scenarios for the Forum. it should help you get more out of the event (or catch a sampling of what's new this year if you're not attending). Most of the companies and products featured at the Forum have been covered in Release 1.0 over the past year; we analyze the new ones (including several first showings indicated by asterisks) at greater length.

We have managed (been forced) to get this program/issue together early this year because it will be posted as part of a Forum-wide demo/working system of Lotus Notes, implemented by Mark Tebbe and his company, Lante. The system will provide a means for users to check the Forum schedule, suggest additional topics for panels or individual speakers to address, send messages, make comments or carry on discussions, arrange open meetings or product showings, collect groups for dinner Tuesday night and otherwise explore the uses of such a system. Furthermore, we hope you find uses for it beyond those noted; that's the point. Anonymous - but tasteful - contributions are encouraged; management reserves the right ...

That's one aspect of the atmosphere we are trying to encourage at the Forum an exploration of once-exotic technology in everyday use. Notes is only one of three featured demos/facilities available to you throughout the three days. The second is American Information Exchange, where you can "buy" or bid for information (free during the Forum). AMIX, still in beta, will offer online information on topics featured at the Forum, from suppliers including PC Letter, Soft-letter, The Office Computing Group, Clarke Burton, Wohl Associates, and Wall Street analysts Michele Preston, Rick Sherlund and Charlotte Walker, as well as ourselves.

The third is Verity, with a filtered, categorized version of the Dow Jones' DowVision, offering customized news briefings to those who file interest profiles. (Other companies will show comparable and complementary products during the afternoon company presentations; see page 2.)

THANK YOU, DAPHNE ! The second flavor that reflects a greater trend is the increasing proportion of joint company/product presentations: Hewlett-Packard and Sun, Keyfile with Bloc Publishing, Eden Group with Nestor and Pen Windows, Slate and PenSoft with PenPoint. NewWave shows up in AT&T's Rhapsody; Desktop Data, Beyond and cc:Mail work with Lotus Notes; PowerBuilder and Cooperative Solutions' Ellipse use Sybase's SQL Server; almost everyone uses Windows.

Someday we hope that everything will be so interoperable that we'll be able to have a single demonstration incorporating all the vendors. Of course, true openness requires business as well as technical cooperation ...

A fundamental, obvious point about networks is that they involve groups individuals sitting at separate workstations connected by wires. Along those wires flows information - structured and susceptible to manipulation by a computer, and unstructured, waiting to be assessed by a person. The structuring of that information can be managed centrally, or by the combined, mostly ad-hoc efforts of individuals or their e-mail agents, as shown across. Plain old databases are the best example of central structure for information we consider to be structured already; text filters and ancillary tools are a semi-automated way of deriving the structure of information without visible structure. Once the structure has been determined and represented electronically, the information is then subject to automatic manipulation, whether by database transactions, e-mail rules or other applications. (Call such structured information objects.)

Most information-sharing groupware tools fit somewhere in this chart, which shows how the content is managed or structured. (We outlined a complementary framework for workflow groupware in Release 1.0, 11-90.) AMIX is a special case, since the actions of local individuals are represented centrally. Control is distributed, however, since over the long run AMIX market-makers reshape the structure in response to local activity. (In the real world, barring interference, markets are distributed - which is why they make so many people nervous.)

Plain e-mail lets users structure their mail by hand; enhanced mail tools let users automatically create structure (currently, hierarchies of folders and associated actions; eventually, who knows) with rules, filters and other scripted routines. Much the same filters for automated derivation of structure can work both locally and centrally (or shared on a server); the difference here is who programs and controls them.

Where does your group begin?

As noted, Lotus Notes is server-based. The server (or replicated servers) manages the information, and presents it in various ways to the users. Notes is the first significant information-sharing groupware tool, and also the first programmable one (cf. the macro facility in 1-2-3 back in 1982). Application developers and users can use Notes to structure their data in hierarchies, tables, cross-references, and to sort it and select it according to various criteria. Depending on politics, not technology, the content and structure can be controlled centrally by a corporate application group, or it can be left in the hands of individual teams of users.