*********************************************************** DSS News D. J. Power, Editor October 26, 2003 -- Vol. 4, No. 22 A Bi-Weekly Publication of DSSResources.COM ************************************************************ Check case by ePeople staff, "Customer-focused decision support at OpSource" ************************************************************ Featured: * Report from IAADS in Omaha * What's New at DSSResources.COM? * DSS News Releases ************************************************************ Put your ad here! Help support DSS News ************************************************************ Report from IAADS in Omaha by Dan Power Editor, DSSResources.COM Omaha, Nebraska is a "booming" city on the banks of the Missouri River, about a 4 hour drive from my home in Cedar Falls, IA. Omaha was the setting Thursday, October 16th and Friday, October 17th for the 2003 IAADS Thought Leaders Summit. The two-day conference was intended to bring together "world leaders in decision support to share ideas and explore the cutting edge of the field". You may be asking "What is a thought leaders conference?" or "Who invited people to the summit?" Basically IAADS is Jerry Wagner's "show". He hopes to create more dialog on advanced decision support and create a virtual organization to work collaboratively on "interesting, leading-edge" decision support projects. Jerry invites people to attend; he sends out the invitations. Some readers may recall my report in DSS News from the 2002 summit. Jerry has made an enormous contribution to the computerized decision support field for more than 25 years. His entrepreneuring with IFPS and Execucom in the early 1980's demonstrated that managers would "buy" computerized, model-driven decision support software. Jerry is a soft-spoken, modest guy who is working hard to advance the field of decision support. I arrived Wednesday at the DoubleTree Hotel and attended the evening IAADS reception sponsored by Booz Allen. The chatter was generally relaxed and social, but Wes Barnes (UT-Austin) and I had a chance to discuss his research on direct search optimization techniques for vehicle routing and military logistics. Promptly at 8pm I left the reception to watch the Cubs lose to the Florida Marlins in a baseball game. I'm more passionate about DSS than baseball, but an exciting baseball game can get "my juices flowing". Thursday morning I had breakfast with Peter Beck and Stan Kowalski, the faciliators for the meeting. Then I checked email in the new Executive Meeting Center on the 19th floor of the DoubleTree, the venue for our sessions. Overall, the facilities and food were excellent. This year the "Summit" was conducted using a "low tech" group facilitation technique called Open Space Technology. In Open Space meetings, participants create and manage their own agenda of parallel working sessions around a central theme. The theme for this year’s Summit was "Rehearsing the Future" and the goal was to create a road map for revitalizing decision support. Peter Beck, Co-Director, Strategic Solutions Center, SAIC Strategies Group, facilitated the sessions. He was patient and supportive as twenty-five (25) "strong personalities" grappled with a controversial set of issues. The conference brought together some of the most passionate advocates for computerized decision support. Henk Sol, Peter Keen and Alexander Verbraeck made opening comments on the Summit theme of "Rehearsing the Future". It was obvious that they had a vision of decision support next generation that they wanted the group to adopt and support. Keen and Sol's upcoming book tentatively titled "Rehearsing the Future" should clarify their ideas for a wider audience. From my perspective, Keen and Sol advocated focusing future decision support research on complex planning problems, especially in the public sector, where visual simulation could help political decision makers. They see that as the way to "revitalize decision support". Verbraeck's (Delft University) research on visual simulation and real-time control using distributed simulation and control components linked using CORBA by wireless networks is very interesting and leading edge. He has been working to develop object oriented simulation component libraries. Verbraeck has focused on improving decisions related to complex transportation and logistics system design problems. Following Verbraeck's presentation, Open Space "the mini-version" took center stage. The process, designed by Harrison Owen, often involves groups of 400-500 people. We only had about 25 participants so it was the "mini version". The Open Space presumption is that participants are collectively "in charge of the meeting". Peter Beck and Stan Kowalski, the facilitators from SAIC, gave us brainstorming freedom. We broke up into small discussion groups based on topics volunteered on the "Market Place" wall. David Paradice (Florida State) volunteered and then led a discussion on "Incorporating Multiple Perspectives into DSS Models"; Rustam Vahidov (Concordia University, Montreal) presented his ideas in a small group setting on "Situated Decision Support"; Miguel Encarnação (iMedia) led a group on "Decision-centered Visualization and Interfaces"; we also had a group on decision maker and stakeholder understanding. I spent most of Thursday in a small group with Michael Goul (ASU) and Rustam Vahidov. Rustam is passionate about what he has labeled "situated DSS" as the new generation of decision support systems. He is particularly interested in the role agent-based sensors and effectors can play in integrating decision makers, a DSS and the relevant decision environment. Vahidov and Kersten have a paper in press at Decision Support Systems Journal on their proposed architecture. Rustam, Michael Goul and I discussed types of sensors and effectors. How would it work? As an example, a sensor agent would collect price information from supplier databases accessible from the Internet and then feed data to a DSS that would help a decision maker choose a vendor and determine product quantity, and then an effector agent would conduct a "bidding" interaction to establish a final price and place an order. Rustam and Kersten need to further clarify their ideas and terms, but this research stream has potential for decision support in some situations. Thanks Rustam for an interesting discussion. At the "Report Back" session, Rustam summarized approximately 4 hours of discussion by our group in 10 minutes. The reports from the four groups were diverse. We needed more time to question the groups about the reports. Goul, Sol, Jim Courtney and Wafa Elgarah (both of Central Florida), and I had a brief meeting following the group reports to review the proposed AIS SIG DSS by-laws. After some minor changes, we agreed the by-laws were ready for submission for approval by AIS Council. Thursday night I watched the Yankees beat the Red Sox in the American League Championship. Friday morning I got up early and had breakfast with Peter Beck and Jerry Wagner. The Friday morning session started with some controversy about the Open Space approach and the "theme" of the Summit. People agreed to disagree and we moved on to create some new working groups. I attended a breakout session led by David King, formerly CTO of Comshare and now CTO with Geac Computer Corp. (http://www.geac.com/). Geac acquired Comshare on August 1, 2003. David was leading a small group of us who were interested in discussing the role and mission of IAADS. Jerry Wagner was of course a central figure in that discussion. I also briefly attended Ramana Rao's group breakout session on creating a Decision Support Next Generation demonstration website. Rao is the founder and CEO of Inzight Software. He spent much of his career at Xerox PARC. Keen and Sol joined the "demo site" group at about the same time I did and Peter suggested identifying a "classic" problem like supply chain for the web site. Rao and Encarnação were providing the thought leadership and had many good ideas. We adjourned about noon; I had a quick lunch and drove back to Cedar Falls. The afternoon session involved reports from the groups, comments by Peter Keen and planning for a 2004 summit. I regret that I couldn't stay to listen, but I hope I contributed a bit to IAADS. What were the results? We do not all agree about the scope of next generation decision support, but clearly we all think decision support is important. DSS is "revitalized". IMHO DSS is not about technology, software or visualization. Rather DSS is about helping decision makers who want and need computerized decision support to improve the quality, efficiency or effectiveness of their decisions. IAADS is about ideas, dialectic, dialog and building relationships for interesting "real world" DSS projects. Thanks Jerry and all of my IAADS friends for an interesting learning experience. References International Academy for Advanced Decision Support (IAADS), http://www.iaads.unomaha.edu/ Vahidov, R. and G. E. Kersten, "Decision station: situating decision support systems," Decision Support Systems, in press. ************************************************************ Tell your friends! 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