AFFILIATE ROUNDUP

UniForum New Zealand Conference

The 11th annual UniForum New Zealand conference, UniForum NZ '94, held in Rotorua May 18-21, attracted nearly 200 delegates, and included 30 local and international speakers, tutorials, workshops and vendor presentations, and a small but exciting exhibition of leading edge technology.

The conference theme was The Open Advantage and the presentations offered a hard look at the real-life costs, benefits, and technical and management issues in open information systems today.

UniForum New Zealand conferences typically do not tolerate thinly-disguised vendor sales pitches. Delegates-users and vendors alike-come to the conference to learn, share experiences and discuss issues that are important to them. This conference was no exception. On more than one occasion, overenthusiastic vendor representatives were interrupted and threatened with water pistols, startling some of the overseas guests. Apologies were made and accepted, and discussion resumed.

Some 20 local and multinational companies sponsored the conference. Sponsors got to exhibit if they wished and UniForum NZ '94 featured a multivendor interoperability display and access to various Internet services.

UniForum New Zealand has 500 members from commerce, government and industry. The association's membership has increased at 15 percent per year over the last four years. Regional meetings, an up-to-date library, book shop and a monthly newsletter are provided. -Brenda Lobb, president, UniForum New Zealand

Australian UNIX and Open Systems Conference

The annual conference sponsored by the Australian UNIX and Open Systems Users Group (AUUG) is slated for September 6-9 in Melbourne, Australia. A Call for Papers for the program has been issued with submissions for the one full-day and two half-day sessions centered around the theme Open Systems. Looking into the Future. AUUG '94 will be a four-day conference, with the first day devoted to tutorial presentations, followed by three days of papers, works-in-progress and product update sessions, and BOFs. Tutorials are lecture format with plenty of "how-to" content. Papers are tracked toward both technical and management audiences. Works in progress and product updates are 15 minute highlights and the BOFs tackle individual topics in one-hour informal sessions. The Conference Secretariat can be contacted at P.O. Box 468, Paddington, NSW 2021 Australia, or by phone at (02) 332-4622 or by fax at (02) 332-4066.

UniForum Trinidad and Tobago Open Systems Conference

UniForum's newest affiliate, UniForum Trinidad and Tobago will hold their annual conference and exhibition July 13-14 in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad. The objective of the conference is to discuss and demonstrate interoperability in heterogeneous computer environments. Demonstrations at three levels are sought: applications, database and operating system. The basic services to be examined include file transfer between different applications, electronic mail, accessing different databases from any client and mounting of remote network drives. An ambitious exhibit is planned that will see the formation of a fictitious company with five departments. Four of the departments will have their own servers and clients, which should all be able to communicate seamlessly . The fifth department will have only client systems, which will be able to access data from the servers located in the other departments. For more information contact Terrence Pierre, Petroleum Company of Trinidad and Tobago Ltd., Pointe-A-Pierre, Trinidad, WI, telephone (809) 658-2858, or fax (809) 658-1825.

Dallas Ft. Worth UNIX Users Group (DFWUUG)

This active UniForum affiliate holds membership meetings every month, with varied programs that recently have addressed topics such as wide area networks, business process re-engineering, and superservers. Typically these sessions feature presentations from regional representatives of leading systems vendors who present technical and applications-level reports on new developments. The June 2 meeting featured one such session entitled Business Process Re-engineering Using Adaptive Applications, which was presented by representatives from Applix. DFWUUG publishes a regular newsletter; for information about receiving the newsletter via e-mail or for details on their programs, contact Evan Brown at (214) 519-3577, or via e-mail at evbrown@spd.dsccc.com.