On behalf of the entire membership of the M Technology Association, I want to thank John Covin for all of the work that he has done and his excellent leadership of this organization for the past seven years. I am very grateful that the bylaws of the MTA will keep John on the Board of Directors during my tenure as Chair. The other board members and I will continue to rely on his intelligence, experience and common sense.
I would also express my appreciation to Richard Davis and Gregg Seppala, two board members who will not be returning but who contributed greatly to this organization. Susan O'Gorman and Ed de Moel, who are newcomers to the board but who have already demonstrated many years of dedication to the MTA, will be welcome additions. I want to also thank Dave Lenhart for his interest and efforts and for being a candidate for the board.
In the past two years, the Board of Directors and the superb staff of the MTA have improved the financial condition of our organization. After two consecutive years of losses, we now have a fund balance greater than it was two years ago. This was accomplished in spite of continued loss of membership and continued declining attendance at our annual meeting.
To this scenario we must add the changes that will be inherent in being part of an industry dominated by a single vendor. Micronetics has been an important member of our community for many years. Now they, like DataTree and DEC before them, will be assimilated into the InterSystems family of M products. What will this mean to the MTA and the MDC and the entire M community?
John Covin has expressed the current role of the MTA very succinctly, "The role of the MTA is to provide a forum for the M community." Should this role change? I don't think it should. The M community consists of the M vendors, the M developers, the M programmers and the M users. To the extent that this community has common goals, common problems, common educational and training issues and common expectations, the MTA should provide a forum for discussion, education and resolution of all of these common issues.
The literature is full of articles about the decreasing role of committee-determined standards. At a time when technology is moving so rapidly, the de facto standard is being set by the leaders. Bill Gates continues to set more standards than he adopts. This is not a question that the MTA Board of Directors will decide. In the end, InterSystems, the MDC and the M developers will decide it.
The answer to this question is quite obviously related to the answer to the previous question. As a long-time software developer, I can attest to the fact that we can become very myopic without a significant amount of input from the community we serve. I would hope that the MDC would continue to have an influence on the future development of the M language.
During the Association meeting at the recent MTA Annual Conference, a straw poll of the attendees produced two messages: (1) associating with a larger meeting, such as we have done for the past three years, is a good idea and (2) a desire for decreasing the cost of attending the meeting. At the board meeting held in conjunction with the recent MTA Annual Meeting, it was decided to look for another software conference with which we might associate. If the MTA staff can not find a good fit, we will, at least for the coming year, opt for a stand-alone meeting at a location somewhere in the central U.S. with lower hotel rates than are available in a city such as Boston.
In a larger sense, it will not matter whether there are five M vendors or one if the membership and annual meeting attendance continue on their current path. Extrapolation of the trends of the past five years clearly shows that we will no longer be a viable organization by the year 2000. This is the M Technology Association's Y2K issue.
Amidst the gloom and doom, there is a bright side to life in the M community:
All of this is happening while the number of MTA members and the attendance at the annual meeting are both declining. What is wrong with this picture?
Our problems are not unique. Technology is now changing too quickly for anyone to wait for an annual meeting to find out what is going on. The Internet has played its role in decreasing the attendance at many conferences. There are numerous instances in which you can get better information from a web page than from the brochures you pick up at a conference.
On the other hand, there are few better ways to learn about a subject of your immediate interest than to attend a well-structured seminar or ask questions of a panel of people who have already done what you need to get done.
In a sense, the product that the MTA has been producing for the M community has either not been good enough or has not been marketed properly. "Sales" are going down. We must build a product that is of greater value and we must market it better. To this end, the board of directors welcomes any and all suggestions from you, the MTA User's Group if you will, to help the MTA achieve these goals.
The MTA has resources within the M community that no one M vendor or no one M developer can match. We need to marshal those resources to build a product that will increase membership and increase the attendance at our meetings. If we do not meet this challenge, the MTA's Y2K issue will get us, and the M community will be the poorer for it.
Don Gall is president of Omega Computer Systems, Inc. and Chair of the MTA Board of Directors.