PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

Dear Members,

At our last meeting in January, we enjoyed Chris Date's presentation on a new topic he hadn't spoken on before: competing perceptions about data availability in databases vs. on the Web, especially in regards of the meaning of the "null" value. His wide recognition and speaking abilities made the presentation a treat to listen to. For next year and following, the only time Chris would be available would be in February, since he is pretty well booked from March on, every year.

February 7th we have Jeff Perkul who will present an approach on how to bridge the gap between the Entity-Relationship and the XML worlds. Please note the change of venue. We will meet at SCIF in San Francisco instead, the same location for the March meeting.

Elections to the board of directors are coming: nominations in February, followed by elections in March. The new board will take office 1st of April. Five members of the board have indicated their intent to continue serving, though for most in new positions, and a member of our chapter has already indicated an interest to join us. Since there is a total of nine positions, we need three more volunteers. The positions for which I do not have a commitment are: Program Director, Resource Director, DAMAday Director. Please look at our web site at http://www.sfdama.org/sfdama_board_responsibilities.htm for the description of responsibilities for these positions.

The DAMA International Symposium this year is in March, from Sunday the 4th to Thursday the 8th in Boston. At least four members of our local chapter: Danette McGilvray, Jeff Pekrul, David Plotkin, and Mehmet Orun, will be there as presenters, putting our chapter on the international map, joining renown speakers as Peter Aiken, Graeme Simsion and John Zachmann.

We will have individual and board member participation at this year's DAMA International conference and we will be on the look out for interesting topics and good speakers. Also, we are getting ready to finalize the rest of the year's program (did you know our program through June is posted on our blog?) as well as identifying topics for the DAMA Day. If your company is working towards specific initiatives or you are interested in a particular topic, email our program director, Mehmet Orun, at programs@sfdama.org. We will seek to incorporate the material. You can use the same email address to submit presentation ideas, whether you are looking to brainstorm for your internal work, getting ready for a conference, or simply want to share your thoughts.

The following week, during our March meeting after our chapter board of directors' elections, we will have John O'Brien telling about four emerging technologies and how we can leverage them in our environments.

The following month, in April, we have Michael Scofield introduce us to Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Data Management. In May, Charles Betz will talk about Enterprise Architecture. In June, David Pilati will give us a workshop on Facilitation. For more information on these upcoming events, please consult the Communication Director's blog.

My thoughts for the month are about SO, or "Service Orientation". I have seen in a few years many SO (Service Oriented) this and SO that, which followed the emergence of SOA (SO Architecture), like SOE (SO Enterprise), SOP (SO Programming), SOO (SO Objects) SOBI (SO Business Intelligence), SONA (SO Network Architecture), SODA (SO Database Architecture), SOAP (SO Application Platform), SOC (SO Clients or Computing), SOM (SO Middleware), and so on. All of that looks a little bit like pie in the sky (how we should manage, plan, analyze, design, etc.) from different perspectives. What seems to be missing is an implementable infrastructure that supports all of that; could I recommend SOI for "SO Infrastructure"? Too late! Someone already came up with SOI (SO Integration).

See you on the 7th.


François Cartier
President, SF DAMA