Clearing out some of the backlog of drafts, it seems I have one more post on this topic to wrap up…
Here are some thoughts on content for future October Rules Fest gatherings. This is, of course, highly subjective.
In general, I think James Owen shouldn’t have to bear the burden of organizing all the content. I think there should be a small panel of folks to solicit, select and approve the content. In addition, I think there should be plenty of lead time and slides should have to be presented in advance. Better yet, let’s have real papers rather than just PPT slides.
As my friend Larry says “it’s still the wild west”. The spectrum of talks that can be given is still very wide. Here are some topics I would like to see included.
- Best practices for knowledge engineering
- SDLC and processes tailored to building rule-based systems
- Organizational change and corporate culture when rule-based systems are involved
- Testing of rule-based systems (I know 2 folks who are considering presentations on this topic.)
- Maintenance of rule-based systems (This is a topic that I would considering presenting.)
- Cross-engine performance testing (I’m looking at you, Steve Nunez.)
- Rule language standards efforts and portability
- Backward chaining in all its forms
- Other algorithms. Let’s talk about the full spectrum: TREAT, LEAPS, Gator, HAL, MatchBox…as well as Rete/UL, Rete*, DRete.
- Rete performance optimizations. Obviously, the vendors can’t talk about their proprietary stuff. However, there is a good body of literature on this topic and a good over-all survey would be welcome
- More time on the discussion of parallel Rete implementations and the related approaches – and any other parallel algorithms as well
And finally, here are some of the other folks I would like to hear speak:
- Paul Haley
- Ernest Friedman-Hill
- Douglas Lenat
- Someone from the Soar community: perhaps Michael van Lent or John Laird
- Then there are the folks no longer really working in the rule space, but I would love to hear them talk anyway… Anoop Gupta, Daniel Miranker, Bob Doorenbos, Eric Hanson, Dr. John Durkin, etc.
I probably have more to say on this topic, but this draft has languished for awhile so it’s time to move on.
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