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Subject:
From:
Hal Hart <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Date:
Tue, 16 Nov 1999 17:56:53 -0800
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AdaWorks wrote:

> ....
> It is confounding that we are relying on volunteers [you mentioned
> Hal Hart] for the expansion of our marketplace.
> ...
> It is clear that the ARA is not moving to advance the awareness of the
> public regarding Ada.  ...

To be fair, the so-called SIGAda "Ada Awareness Initiative" (AAI), which I
logistically manage and which is about keeping the Ada flag showing at various
conferences/shows outside the strictly Ada community, is now almost 100% funded
by the ARA.

SIGAda started this initiative in 1993 when we had a very healthy 6-digit fund
balance.   (Educator volunteers such as Rich Pattis and Mike Feldman had had an
Ada table at the annual SIGCSE symposium for years before that.)  With
consistently declining SIGAda conference attendance (not much worse than the
"industry average" for many conferences) and failure to build this into
conference budgeting assumptions for several years, SIGAda suffered substantial
losses on conferences 1996-1998 (we made a small 5-digit surplus this year  --
see PS below!!), which coupled with continued aggressive spending on the AAI &
other SIGAda activities in recent years, successfully "re-invested" our ENTIRE
SIGAda fund balance.  To continue the AAI, the ARA came to our rescue two years
ago.  Hence, their grant to SIGAda is regarded as "fenced" money and ACM may not
question SIGAda's funneling the entire grant to the AAI, even if SIGAda's fund
balance were to go negative.

This is not a great deal of money annually (another smallish 5-digit amount),
and as has been said repeatedly only has a limited one-dimensional effect as a
"volunteer" effort, but it is almost the same amount SIGAda was willing to spend
every year from 1993 onwards when the SIGAda officers had the luxury of making
discretionary spending decisions.

And, Rational is an ARA member, along with ACT, Green Hills Software, Aonix,
AverStar, OC Systems, and DDC-I.

     -hh  ([log in to unmask])


PS:  To relive last month's successful SIGAda'99 via its daily newsletters, go
visit http://www.acm.org/sigada/conf/sigada99/Ada-WOW   :-)

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