THE SHARED DESTINY INITIATIVES

The destiny of OR/MS in academia is the destiny of OR/MS in practice. The success of either requires the success of the other. Therefore INFORMS needs to become just as excellent at serving the needs of full-time practitioners as it is at serving the needs of academics. The efforts this document summarizes sprang from and are evolving in this spirit of "shared destiny".

This document replaces earlier documents on the same topic. Its purpose is to describe the main ideas that have been suggested by various parties to improve the value that INFORMS offers to full-time practitioners, a term by which we mean to include engineering analysts and other professionals in non-management settings. Of course, many of these are valuable also to part-time practitioners, including practicing academics. An attempt has been made to capture many of the views expressed by Roundtable members, by members of the INFORMS Board, and by many others since discussions started during the summer of 1995. See http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/informs/redact.htm for a redaction of the comments made during a Practice Online List discussion in the spring of 1996.

The ideas below are organized under the headings Meetings, Publications, Chapters and Sections, Prizes, and General. The current status of most ideas is indicated in the indented paragraphs. Names given in parentheses are people who are playing or could play a prominent role; see the index at the end for a summary of who is associated with which idea. On-line readers have the benefit of hyperlinks, the URLs of most of which are spelled out in the text for the benefit of those reading hard copy.

Help from all quarters is most welcome!  Please send comments and suggestions to ageoffri@agsm.ucla.edu or tspencer@att.com.
 

It seems safe to assume that the reason why few full-time practitioners attend INFORMS meetings is the perception, if not the reality, that these meetings do not offer enough value to them.

a) More and Better Content for Practitioners

Expand the CPMS/Roundtable Practice Track (presently one track for one day at one meeting per year) into 2 or 3 or even more parallel tracks for one or two days at both major INFORMS meetings. Highly interactive sessions are desirable. Consider how to provide, implicitly or even explicitly, a marketplace for the burgeoning OR/MS consulting sector. Aggressively continue the Plant Tour and Software Tutorial innovations. More Workshops and Tutorials for practitioners would also help, as would continuing education events for them (item 23b) and better exhibits (item 3). Look at the Detroit meeting design, which catered extensively to practitioners, for innovations that might be adopted as SOP.

CPMS and the Roundtable are valuable resources for implementing some of the above ideas, but durable progress requires institutionalization by INFORMS.

The Board passed (5/96) a motion giving the General Chair of each national meeting the responsibility to identify a full-time practitioner to serve on the Local Committee to "advocate and facilitate practitioner-related efforts", with the goal being "to maximize exposure and attendance at the practice-related sessions." Further clarification ensued with 1997 VP/Practice Activities Leon Schwartz' comprehensive statement of responsibilities for this "Practice Activities Coordinator" (Section Q.A in the 11/96 Atlanta Board Book).  Implementation to date has been spotty at best.

Much more remains to be done.

Most would agree that consistently high quality presentations cannot be achieved within INFORMS' present meetings policy. Therefore, an attempt should be made to reengineer INFORMS meetings with the aim of drastically increasing the quality of presentations and reducing the number of parallel sessions, if this can be done without jeopardizing attendance levels and profitability. To reduce risk, any radical redesign could be tested by trying it at just one main meeting per year for a few years.

One idea is to place greater emphasis on the Reviewed Paper idea, and perhaps expand it to include papers for which hard copy is not required if presentation materials are posted on the Web in advance (see item 11a below). Added perks might increase participation: still greater visibility in the Bulletin, more speaking time, publication in a Proceedings or an INFORMS journal, and so on.

A second idea is to develop and widely distribute pointers for making effective oral presentations, and to offer a standing workshop on this topic. This is a personal skill that nearly all members should be interested in refining.

A third idea is to introduce poster sessions, which would preserve academic travel funding and help to eliminate the present problem of conflicts caused by too many parallel sessions. Poster sessions were tried in the early 70s, and the advice of those involved is needed along with the advice of those who are familiar with poster sessions as used by other societies such as SIAM.

The Board discussed poster sessions at the 11/96 Atlanta meeting, and there was agreement that an experiment should be tried at the 10/97 Dallas meeting (this did not occur).  Cynthia Rinaldi produced a highly informative 1/27/97 report on what other societies are doing with poster sessions. The Meetings Committee is not enthusiastic about poster sessions.

The Meetings Committee has conceived a bold plan to create an "INFORMS 2000" meeting that would be designed primarily for practitioners.  The planning committee for INFORMS 2000 is being chaired by President Elect Tom Magnanti, and this was the topic of his meeting in Montreal with the Roundtable.  Work on the new meeting is advancing nicely.

Meetings need to be packaged much better for full-time practitioners in order to persuade them to come and to help them make better use of their time when they do. Better packaging would also attract more day-tripping practitioners to the Exhibit Hall (see item 3). Consideration could be given to a special half-day or one-day price for full-time practitioners.

We need a supplement or special section of the Bulletin designed for full-time practitioners. It could include (a) a list of papers and featured speeches of particular interest to practitioners (someone needs to read all titles, at least, in order to identify these -- self-identification by authors failed badly every time it was tried), (b) a list of companies and pointers to the papers their employees are presenting, (c) a list of Plant Tours, (d) a list of the Workshops of practitioner interest, (e) a list of the Software Tutorials, (f) particulars on the Exhibits (the visibility of Exhibits in the Atlanta Bulletin and previous Bulletins was woefully inadequate), (g) particulars on the Edelman competition at spring meetings, (h) notice of any awards relating to practice, (i) notice of the CPMS Isolated Practitioner Workshop, (j) mention of any dovetailing meetings aimed at practitioners (e.g., an AGIFORS Symposium dovetailed with the 11/96 Atlanta meeting), (k) mention of our Job Placement Service, and (l) anything else likely to interest to practitioners (e.g., the Guest Program and Guest Tours).

The Board and Roundtable discussed this topic in three separate sessions at the 11/96 Atlanta meeting, and are strongly supportive. Julie Eldridge demonstrated a nice mock-up produced in collaboration with a graphics designer, and the Board appropriated $8,500 to support its further development and deployment for the 5/97 San Diego meeting. Such a supplement could also be attractive to MBA students. A supplemental brochure was prepared and distributed (somewhat late) for the San Diego meeting. A similar brochure -- again very late-- was produced and distributed for the Dallas meeting.  This initiative lapsed for Montreal.

Mike Trick used the content of the San Diego supplemental brochure as the basis for a set of Web pages that both supplement this brochure and attract additional attendees: http://www.informs.org/Conf/SD97/Prof/. Something similar was done for Dallas: Professional's Guide to the INFORMS Dallas National Meeting.

Our experience to date needs to be evaluated, and a decision made on what to do for subsequent meetings.

Personal networking is one of the main reasons why people attend meetings. Moreover, since full-time practitioners tend to have much less of a sense of community than academics do, measures that increase this sense of community tend to improve the morale and vitality of the world of practice.

One way to facilitate practitioner networking would be to designate and publicize a specific room or hotel location for this purpose. Another would be to stage a reception specifically for full-time practitioners. A third would be to give them specially colored badges. A fourth is provided by item 4 below (meeting registration lists sorted by organization). A fifth would be to adopt the "shared suite" idea detailed in Geoffrion's 9/13/96 Email to Julie Eldridge, although this idea is as suitable for academics as for full-time practitioners.

1997 VP/Practice Activities Leon Schwartz has included concern for practitioner networking among the responsibilities of the new Practice Activities Coordinator on each Local Meetings Committee.

At the 5/97 San Diego meeting, non-academics were issued colored badges and a "Professional's Lounge" with light refreshments was set aside for them in the Exhibit Hall (this pleased the software exhibitors, who are particularly interested in non-academic visitors).  The same was done in Dallas.  Montreal had colored badges, but no lounge owing to lack of space.

IBM Consulting sponsored a reception for full-time practitioners in Dallas at which a short program by Leon Schwartz helped to orient them to practitioner-oriented groups within INFORMS and to meeting features of particular interest.  No such reception was arranged for Montreal.

The Meetings Committee has declined the shared suite idea.

Increase the number of exhibits at most meetings (especially computer software exhibits), and take steps to increase traffic by more vigorously promoting the Exhibit Hall to the local practitioner community. Giving exhibitors better visibility on IOL could be an attractive added inducement.

Lionheart had the contract for managing exhibits, but this came back in-house after the 5/97 San Diego meeting. The Local Committee and exhibitors could be encouraged to issue many more one-day exhibit passes and expand publicity to entice more people, especially practitioners within day-trip distance, to come and learn more about OR/MS-related technology. Talk to trade show managers at ACM, APICS, SIAM, etc., about how they manage and market their shows. For example, SIAM puts coffee, poster sessions, and a beer bust in their exhibit area to increase traffic. Lionheart knows the APICS situation intimately (more than 5 times as many exhibitors, more than a million dollars per year in income!).

At Geoffrion's invitation, John Llewellyn distributed a handout to the Roundtable for feedback on the 11/96 Atlanta exhibits and for advice on policy issues. At the San Diego meeting, the INFORMS Meetings Committee convened an informal discussion session of exhibitors to receive their feedback and suggestions for improving future exhibits. This was done again in Dallas and Montreal.

The Software Tutorials experiment in Atlanta was a success. Julie Eldridge has helped to institutionalize it by inclusion in the Meetings Manual and in the Meetings 101 session offered at every national meeting. A dependably vigorous Software Tutorial program in the future will help to attract both exhibitors and attendees.

At the San Diego meeting, the refreshment area for full-time practitioners deep in the Exhibit Hall helped to increase traffic. There was a similar lounge at the Dallas meeting, but none was arranged for Montreal.

Julie Eldridge has some new options from ICM, on bar coding badges or scanner cards, that are under discussion.

The printed version of the INFORMS Membership Directory has a section sorted by organization, and this is very useful for a variety of purposes. Networking at meetings would be facilitated for full-time practitioners (see item 2 above) and academics if the same thing were done for the list of each meeting's registrants (not the same as the list of speakers). It would be easier to make this information available on-line than in printed form, but then access would become a problem unless a sufficient number of public terminals were made available (such an innovation is under discussion).

Done. The ICM meeting software can support this innovation. Julie Eldridge produced a simple version for the 5/97 San Diego meeting, the 10/97 Dallas meeting, and 4/98 Montreal meeting.  Future versions may include session numbers for presenting authors and a hotel code if the necessary data can be captured economically.

Job titles, Email addresses, personal Web URLs, and other basic data (interests? employment sector?) can be collected easily as part of the meeting registration process to help keep the INFORMS membership database current, and to feed a prospective member database (see item 22b). The ICM database offers no technical obstacle. The benefits go far beyond the practitioner community. Exactly what data should be collected is open for discussion, with intended uses as the driver. Look at ASA, ASQC, and IEEE for their thoughtful segmentation designs. Such data collection becomes even easier when meeting registration becomes fully automatic via IOL.

The next step is for Lisa Klose and the Marketing Strategy Committee to discuss this with each other and with the Office IS Committee.

INFORMS is just one of many associations and event impresarios competing for the attention of OR/MS professionals. Study how full-time practitioners in different OR/MS practice segments decide which professional meetings to attend, and how they decide which sessions to go to at the meetings they do attend. Then improve INFORMS meetings based on the findings.

Conventional wisdom suggests that full-time practitioners want consistently high quality presentations of use on the job, good personal networking opportunities, good exhibits, and either an attractive or nearby location, but the truth may differ somewhat. Compile individual views and historical choices (and their rationales) based on individual interviews or focus groups (traditional or on-line). After hearing from perhaps 100 full-time practitioners, including many who seldom if ever go to INFORMS meetings, it should be evident how to better serve such people's needs.

Former Director of Marketing Nancy Butler began to convene focus groups to discuss this and other aspects of practitioner needs and how INFORMS is perceived. She presented a draft kit (letters, poster, flyer) at the Atlanta meeting aimed at arranging such focus groups, received strong support for this approach, and refined it based on feedback. The first focus group occurred 2/3/97.  Nancy left INFORMS, but returned for the 10/97 Dallas meeting and conducted 7 problem detection focus groups with Lew Pringle.  Two of these were with practitioners.  Although discussion was not directed specifically toward how practitioners choose meetings and sessions, the results -- still being analyzed -- may shed light on these questions.

Every practitioner consumes professionally oriented news and information on a regular basis. This provides the opportunity for INFORMS to become more useful -- perhaps even indispensable -- to practitioners, principally through OR/MS Today and the Web (INFORMS Online and Practice Online). To capture this opportunity well, the news appetites of practitioners need to be better understood.

Many general membership magazines of other societies carry news of interest to members; e.g., see the News Track department of CACM and the News Briefs department of Computer.

Because page space is scarce and on-line space is plentiful and cheap, and because news has such a limited shelf life, it may be best to place most practitioner-oriented news on-line. Hyperlinks make it easy to point to full-text news sources, so the problem becomes largely one of selection; hence the need to understand what interests practitioners. There are good search tools to find news of interest if we know what we are looking for. Also, clipping services can surface candidate items if suitable search criteria can be designed.

Associate editors dedicated to news could be appointed at OR/MS Today and at an INFORMS Web site.

Early in 1997, Lionheart launched a News Room on their Web site that included OR/MS news.  It was abandoned about a year later as not worth the required resources (in the absence of INFORMS subsidy).

a) Make Roundtable Meeting Minutes Available to the OR/MS Today Editor (George Freestone, Peter Horner)

Giving OR/MS Today Editor Peter Horner access to the Roundtable's meeting minutes would help him identify topics and develop articles of interest to full-time practitioners, because these minutes provide excellent examples of what interests them. But the minutes themselves would not be published in OR/MS Today.

Done. A policy that protects the privileged nature of Roundtable discussions through editing was approved by the Roundtable Executive Committee and by a vote of the members attending the 11/96 Atlanta meeting. Horner is enthusiastic, and Roundtable General Secretary George Freestone implemented this initiative. Horner was provided with the minutes of several past meetings for starters. In addition, he is now provided routinely with the agenda for each meeting in advance, and if he wishes to attend sessions of particular interest this is permitted on a space-available basis if the speakers agree.

Roundtable General Secretary George Freestone could publish an edited and lagged version of his meeting minutes on the Roundtable Web page with the assistance of Practice Online's Editor Terry Harrison. This would increase the usefulness of this site to practitioners, and would also benefit the Roundtable as an on-line resource for members, through extra visibility for Roundtable presenters, and as a recruiting aid. This initiative would also help deliver on item 24 (on-line knowledge base concerning practice).

Done. A policy that protects the privileged nature of Roundtable discussions through editing, and that imposes a one-meeting lag prior to public posting, was approved by the Roundtable Executive Committee and by a vote of the members attending the 11/96 Atlanta meeting.

Terry Harrison and George Freestone have implemented this initiative. Editing and Web conversion are both be done promptly in Freestone's office, and minutes are posted ASAP with password protection for the benefit of Roundtable members (remember that public access is lagged). Public postings presently begin with the 2/93 meeting, and gradually will extend back to earlier meetings.

OR/MS Today is very highly valued by practitioners. Even so, it would be useful for the Editor to have a representative panel of practitioners with which to discuss the kinds of magazine content that practitioners find worthwhile, and where good story leads and writers can be found. Meetings would occur periodically, perhaps annually, with Email consultations in between. The scope of discussion could include all categories of materials: feature articles, news, columns, advertisements, etc.

Probably the OR/MS Today Committee should appoint and oversee this panel. Practitioners could be recruited from CPMS, the Roundtable, practice-oriented INFORMS sections and societies (e.g., those on aviation, military applications, and railroads), and elsewhere.

The 1996 OR/MS Today Committee endorsed this idea and recommended it to the 1997 committee, which agreed.  But no panelists have been appointed to date.  Perhaps it would suffice simply to appoint more practitioners to the OR/MS Today Committee.

Horner is enthusiastic. He was a Roundtable guest at the 11/96 Atlanta meeting, and distributed a handout for feedback that included his 1997 editorial calendar and some editorial issues.

It seems safe to assume that the reason why few full-time practitioners read INFORMS journals is that these journals do not offer enough value to them.

We are not speaking about Interfaces or OR/MS Today. The former has always catered to practitioners. The latter has shifted even more in the direction of practitioners in recent years: the majority of feature articles are now real-world oriented, and many departments are also (Cyberspace, Industry Update, Practice Lessons, Oracle, Real World).

a) Establish More Practice-Oriented Journal Features (Mark Daskin)

Adding more practitioner-oriented features (esp. columns) to journals other than Interfaces would help practitioners and also help to focus academic attention on the needs of practice. Suitable material includes tips from successful practitioners, expositions of new OR/MS technologies now ready for practical application, reviews of OR/MS software and technology, pointers to excellent practice-related articles in other journals, beginning-of-year predictions of where OR/MS technology seems to be heading, and end-of-year summaries from editors and perhaps others of the year's articles of value to practitioners. It would be desirable to post these articles on-line. Periodically, some could be reprinted separately (in clusters, perhaps like Scientific American) for sale or promotional purposes.

Dormant. Full-time practitioners have little time and incentive to write such material and seldom read any INFORMS publications other than OR/MS Today and Interfaces.

The Editor of each INFORMS journal could be invited to designate someone who would identify journal material likely to interest practitioners and forward it to Interfaces and INFORMS Online or Practice Online. The aim would be for each journal to "reach out" to practitioners via articles or digests or notices of materials of practical interest (new technology ready for application, work done in a corporate setting, practically-inspired advances, practitioner-oriented abstracts, etc.). Pertinent fact: every ACM journal has appointed an Information Director who is responsible for the development and maintenance of the journal's Web pages. We could do something similar, with practitioner outreach as a specific objective.

Practice Online Editor Terry Harrison is ready to move forward.

VP-Publications Mark Daskin believes academic journal editors should not presume to post materials for practitioner consumption; that should be done by full-time practitioners themselves. He also has concerns about imposing extra duties on a journal volunteer community that is already overworked. A response to these concerns is that each journal could appoint a practitioner liaison to serve the proposed function. Mark has asked each journal editor to designate someone to serve as liaison to Interfaces and Practice Online. To date, 6 have done so.

Interfaces Editor Mike Rothkopf is acting as the focal point for incoming practice items, but there have been none to date.

The Web, and more generally the Internet and intranets and on-line services, are critically important developments that will affect every member of our profession. INFORMS could actively seek to help its members keep pace with this progress and exploit some of the many new opportunities.

One way to do this is through "cyberspace" columns in our most popular publications (cf. the Binary Critic and Internet Kiosk columns in IEEE's Computer, and the Digital Village and Personal Computing columns in ACM's CACM). These columns could stress good on-line data sources, the best access software, new ways to use the Net professionally, opportunities for OR/MS arising via the Net, URL compendia (possibly including evaluations) of Net resources on pertinent topics, how to get involved in a company's new Web site or intranet project through performance or telecommunications modeling, etc. See also the topics listed under items 11b and 21. One of the overarching themes would be that organizing the immense resources of the Net for professional advantage is one of the great challenges of our time, and an important opportunity for professional societies to deliver value to their members and attract new ones.

Done by OR/MS Today.  Editor Peter Horner appointed Mohan Sodhi to write a cyberspace column in OR/MS Today, and they have been appearing regularly since the 8/96 issue.  This column targets practitioners, partly because academia is well ahead of the practitioner community in cyberspace participation. This column is available on-line as well as in print.

Editor Mike Rothkopf appointed Terry Harrison to do the same in Interfaces, but to date there have been no columns and there are no plans for any in the future.

Sodhi was a Roundtable guest at the 11/96 Atlanta meeting, where he distributed a handout for feedback. Harrison was a Roundtable guest at the 5/97 San Diego meeting.

What do we do when we find non-member full-time practitioners? Probably we should give them an issue of OR/MS Today, an issue of Interfaces, something describing INFORMS and its services from a practitioner perspective, and an invitation to receive a few more issues of each while they make up their mind whether or not to subscribe or join INFORMS.

In return, we could ask trial subscribers to provide some basic information on themselves to help build our database on non-members (see item 22b).

This initiative has been folded into item 22b.

The Web will dramatically change the nature of INFORMS' publications over the next decade. If we don't plan our future in this regard, it will come anyway and could wreck our publications empire. See, for example, the bold moves being made by ACM, Computer Society, and SIAM.

Some experiments relating to electronic publication are under way or being planned for Interfaces, ITORMS, Operations Research, and OR/MS Today. These should be encouraged and continued.

One possibility is a suite of new Web-based publications that are industry-specific. Mohan Sodhi has advocated this approach.

Geoffrion asked Mark Daskin, Terry Harrison, Mike Rothkopf, Ramesh Sharda, and Mike Trick to summarize what they are doing and thinking about electronic publications from a practitioner viewpoint, and to consider opportunities for new kinds of informal publications on INFORMS Web sites. The ideas in the three subsections below are an outgrowth of these discussions. In addition:

Ramesh Sharda (owner of ORCS-L and Editor of ITORMS) passed along some information on electronic publishing from his library, and suggests experimentation with on-line Web conferences. The opportunities for such conferences include item 23b.

Mike Trick (INFORMS Online Editor) suggests that we make Interfaces available freely in electronic form and that Edelman papers be made available on the Web. Interfaces Editor Mike Rothkopf would be happy to have Edelman paper abstracts placed on-line back to the beginning of the competition, but would want a several-year lag for full text. With Board support, late in the summer of 1997 Terry Harrison did in fact place all Edelman abstracts since the competition started (more than 20 years worth) on-line.

Many more practitioners give presentations at meetings than write papers for publication. Nearly all presentations use visual aids, and most visual aids are available in digital form (the rest could be digitized by scanning). Such materials could be broadly solicited, put in a form suitable for Web posting, and then "published" on the Web for other practitioners to access. Proper indexing and a good search engine should make these materials quite usable, even if lacking many of the details of a traditional "paper".

Such materials exist in considerable quantity from presentations at national/special/chapter meetings (not necessarily INFORMS) and at local university and OR/MS Speakers Program talks. The usual confidentiality hurdle should not be a problem for such materials. Some in-house presentations may even be fair game for sharing via the Web. A critical mass of materials on-line could be a big magnet for practitioners.

This idea originated in Daskin's 4/26/96 Email to Practice Online (POL) List, which is reproduced at the bottom of p. 16 of Geoffrion's on-line redaction. See also Nebiker's 4/27/96 Email to POL List (redaction p. 19).

A practical hurdle will be the conversion of presentation materials to Web format: who does it, and with what tools. The main options for who does it are the author (this option is aided by item 11b below and should grow more popular over time), the author's organization (large organizations could be asked for blanket approval to handle such conversions as a matter of enlightened corporate policy), INFORMS staff working under the direction of the new IT Manager, paid graduate students, or a network of volunteers (e.g., student members might be willing to convert materials for industry people in their local area as a way of getting better acquainted). As for tools, there is ample access to well-informed people who could recommend them (e.g., Geoffrion requested and received detailed advice on tools from Roundtable member PPG, which has an intranet for 11,000 people).

Once there are good options for conversion, steps can be taken to solicit suitable presentation materials: an open invitation on INFORMS Online and POL (and perhaps other mail reflectors, news groups, and Web sites), notices in OR/MS Today, a paragraph in acknowledgment letters for presentations at INFORMS meetings, a notice in each meeting Bulletin, and direct author solicitation (preferably by Email) a few weeks before and then a few weeks after the meeting. In addition, item 1c will identify appropriate papers to solicit to the extent that it produces Bulletin supplements for full-time practitioners.

Done. At the 11/96 Atlanta meeting, the Board budgeted $5,000 for this and Ramesh Sharda agreed to develop this initiative with graduate student assistance. Terry Harrison (POL Editor) offers POL's full cooperation, and Randy Robinson offers to help coordinate the INFORMS Office portions of the implementation. The Publications and IT Committees cooperated with Sharda and Harrison in deciding how best to proceed. Several good implementation points were brought out at the Atlanta meeting in three separate Board and Roundtable sessions, and have been passed on to those involved.

A fully functional system is up, including a Web page that permits anyone to submit presentation materials at any time: http://www.informs.org/Presentation/. Announcements were placed in sci.op-research, ORCS-L, and OR/MS Today (Geoffrion's column in the April, 1997 issue).  Authors were solicited during or after the 5/97 San Diego meeting, the 10/97 Dallas meeting, the 4/98 Montreal meeting, and the 6/98 Israel meeting.  A 7/98 update from Sharda said that there are about 70 entries in the presentation database now, and the need for a categorized display is clearly evident.  He is working with a commercial software developer to build a Yahoo-like tree/resource display capability that should be operational soon.  There are also plans to enhance the home page to provide instructions for dealing with such diverse input formats as PS, PDF, GZ, and ZIP in addition to HTML and PPT.  He has the capability to produce and host streaming video from videotape if the demand arises.

Mike Rothkopf (Interfaces Editor) offers to exchange his practice paper solicitation lists with those who are soliciting on behalf of this initiative, and such an exchange did occur for the San Diego meeting. Both his need to solicit papers and this initiative's need to solicit presentation materials would benefit if volunteers could be found to sift through the programs of non-INFORMS meetings.

(a) The digital medium is richer in some ways than the usual analog medium (easy color graphics, animation, Java applets, hyperlinks, exotic digital editing), and less constraining (no 20 minute speaking limit or page limit).

(b) This innovation would serve the 85% of the membership that doesn't go to any given national meeting.

(c) For the 15% of the membership that does go to a given national meeting, this innovation would mitigate the inevitable conflicts associated with thirty-odd parallel sessions.

(d) Postings in advance will permit meeting attendees to prepare better for live encounters with authors.

(e) Postings made after a presentation would still be valuable for review by those who have attended, and for passing on to those who did not attend.

(f) Postings encourage interactions with authors (e.g., via "mailto" links).

(g) Readers avoid the postal delays associated with paper requests, and authors avoid the office hassle and expense of filling requests.

(h) Digital materials facilitate reuse: incorporation into class materials, quotation in other presentations, and cannibalization.

As Mike Trick points out, the most practical way to implement this idea at present is for each author's organization to provide the necessary Web space for such presentation materials and even for complete papers when available. He further points out that an additional field in the Meetings database could easily be added to hold a URL for each presentation, that these URLs could be published in the Bulletin so that anyone can preview or review a presentation, and that the search engine could be coded to allow searches just over presentations with a URL.

The new system has been extended to this grander purpose. The new database field, adding URLs to the Bulletin, and search engine modifications still require some improvement.

Erhan Erkut, 1997 President of the INFORMED forum and Co-Chair of the Education Committee, has actively embraced this idea by making the INFORMED Web server available as a host for presentation materials and by arranging for INFORMED 1997 VP-Meetings Tom Grossman to invite INFORMED speakers starting with the Atlanta meeting to submit their presentation materials.

An argument can be made that organizational webification is a Big Wave (see item 18) that will impact nearly all INFORMS members.

Given the rapid flowering of intranets and the Web as information media, the development of the Web as a universal interface to application software, and the extraordinary level of media attention, it follows that many INFORMS members need to know more about numerous topics related to organizational webification, including possible synergies with OR/MS.

Pertinent topics include: how to think strategically about webification, how to advance beyond the usual initial focus on Web-visibility, how to move business processes onto the Web, opportunities to apply and even incorporate OR/MS technology, how to choose and prepare materials for an intranet, the landscape of pertinent technologies (including HTML conversion and authoring, Java, ways to link dynamically to database systems, search engines, and site management), where to find and -- when necessary -- how to use some of the best tools, and aspects of electronic commerce and virtual communities. The objective would not be to become a webmaster or HTML jockey, but rather to attain the desired degree of self-sufficiency, to make full and appropriate use of an organization's Web-related resources, to create and exploit new opportunities for OR/MS, and possibly even to help lead organizational webification efforts.

This is a big opportunity for INFORMS to be of service to its members during the Age of the Web. Possible steps include cyberspace columns on some of the topics just listed (see item 9 above), sessions and workshops at INFORMS meetings on these topics, INFORMS Online or Practice Online discussions on these topics, "big wave" treatment of this general topic (see item 18), distribution of informational pamphlets and reprints of excellent magazine articles (e.g., the fine cover feature of PC Magazine's 9/10/96 issue), help for chapters that want to mount familiarization/training/discussion events, and a feature on INFORMS Online devoted to this area (links to good resources, recommendations for good articles and tools, threaded discussion of the topics mentioned in the previous paragraph, etc.).

This initiative may fall mainly under the scope of the IT Committee, but people with various other responsibilities have important potential contributions. Success with this initiative would directly support items 11a and 14.

Geoffrion asked Chris Bullen (IT Committee), Tom Gulledge (Meeetings Committee), Terry Harrison and Mohan Sodhi (cyberspace columnists), Ralph Nebiker (Continuing Education Committee prior to his 10/97 resignation), and Mike Trick (INFORMS Online) to comment on how to approach this opportunity.

Mike Trick and his Associate Editors are already offering tutorial sessions at all national meetings on creating and managing Web pages. He also points out that the 1997 addition of members' personal Web URLs to the membership database sets the stage for automatically compiling an index of these pages that would be full-text-searchable so that, for example, it would be easy to find other members with specific interests. This new avenue of access to member Web pages would be a tangible "member benefit". Mike has agreed to implement this important new resource, and has already placed a complete list of member URLs on IOL at http://www.informs.org/Dir/weblist.html.

A similar thing could be done for university and company Web pages associated with members. The resulting searchable index of personal, university, and company Web pages could easily become the world's premier source of information on OR/MS.

Prior to his resignation, Ralph Nebiker considered making this topic the focus of an on-line event as part of his continuing education efforts.  1998 Continuing Education/Workshops Committee Chair Dennis Fuller may wish to reconsider this possibility.

The joint meeting in Dallas of the Board and the Roundtable on electronic commerce may help launch subsequent INFORMS activities in this area.

Subscription revenues tend to erode as publications migrate onto the Net. Three possible sources for new revenues are evident: readers (e.g., pay-per-access), institutions (e.g., pay for electronic access), and authors (e.g., page charges).

The point of this item is to make sure that the last option is not ignored, especially for flagship journals such as Management Science and Operations Research. Publishing in these journals is mission-critical for academics, so academic authors should be willing to pay a substantial charge for doing so, especially if this charge supports scanning and making articles digitally accessible to a wider audience. On the downside, page charges require extra administrative effort and could reduce the number of submissions unless access is sufficiently widened.

Dormant. Mark Daskin and Kathye Long will consider this idea in the context of INFORMS' evolving electronic publication initiatives. Kathye has extensive experience with page-charging journals.

12. Review Practitioner Focus

A panel of experienced, successful chapter and section officers could be asked to review all subdivisions for practitioner focus and effectiveness. To mention just two small examples: there should be diligent collection of non-member contact information (cf. item 22b) and extensive practitioner input into event design.

Dormant owing to the scarcity of volunteer energy at present.

Some chapters and sections are especially good at reaching out to practitioners and serving them. Their leaders could be interviewed, and the best ideas put into the subdivisions handbook for use by the leadership of other chapters and sections. Dissemination through workshops and list servers would also be desirable. Director of Subdivision Services Mary Magrogan would have a lot to contribute. An effort of this sort would have spillover value for marketing, so Lisa Klose may wish to become involved.

Dormant since Mary Magrogan's mid-1997 development of the New Officer Information binder for subdivisions.

Almost every chapter and section needs a strong presence on the Internet: a roster of members (incl. email addresses) for private networking and announcements, a dedicated mail reflector for discussion, probably their own Web pages within INFORMS Online (IOL), and for the avant-garde one or more Web-based threaded discussion groups. The learning curve is sufficiently steep that the design and implementation process could profit greatly from a new INFORMS kit of ideas and software (happily, handbooks for chapters, fora, and sections are now on IOL). This kit could include the technical essentials, the experiences of chapters and sections that are successfully on-line, and ideas from various Net-wise people.

Geoffrion asked several people to survey current practice with regard to chapter and section Internet presence and to recommend steps for improvement. Here is a sketch of the responses:

Philipp Djang (Subdivisions AE of IOL) offers the excellent idea of appointing a CIO (Webmaster) for each chapter and section, and points out that Trick already offers to host chapter and section home pages.

Mike Trick's 8/18/96 Email offers a list of reasons why chapters and sections should want to have a Web presence, and a nice report on what he is doing to promote that: generating subdivision membership lists from the membership database, moving some subdivision forms to IOL, and having IOL host subdivision list servers. He also offers some suggestions for additional activities: get the word out more aggressively with the help of OR/MS Today, mount Web skills tutorial sessions for subdivisions (see item 11b), and use some of his volunteers to survey the current status of subdivisions on the Net. Subsequently, he mentioned that he has experience with HyperNews for threaded discussions, which is available for IOL use.

Vicki Sauter agrees with the others, especially with the idea that each subdivision should have a CIO, but has concerns about how to maintain 100+ Web pages if they all come through -- she laments that neither IOL nor INFORMS staff have sufficient capacity for this task. Most pages will have to be hosted locally.

On 9/22/96, Sauter asked all chapters, fora, sections, and student chapters to appoint a CIO. (Leon Schwartz advises that the title "Webmaster" is likely to prove more popular than "CIO".)  As of this writing, Web pages exist for all 3 societies, all 3 fora, 25 of 29 sections, 10 of 30 regular chapters, and 8 of 40 student chapters. Philipp Djang and John Birge have been actively pursuing the missing subdivisions, and offer on-line template HTML forms to simplify Web page creation.

Chris Bullen and her Information Technology Committee made a 1997 priority out of increasing the number of subdivisions with Web pages. The same was true of Dave Rogers and his Chapters Subcommittee of the Subdivisions Commmittee.

Djang's page on INFORMS Online for subdivisions supplies a generic Web page to make getting started easier. Djang and Trick offered a workshop on Web skills for webmasters at the 11/96 Atlanta and 5/97 San Diego meetings.  They offer to do so again at future national meetings so long as the demand warrants (Dallas was skipped because of low turnout in San Diego).

INFORMS' prizes should fairly reflect the crucially important connections between practice and theory, and also recognize the best applied contributions with long-term impact on government, industry or public-policy decision makers.  In this spirit,  a review of the administration and selection criteria of INFORMS prizes suggests the following recommendations.

a) Appoint an Appropriate Complement of Practitioners to Prize Committees (President)

It is generally easier to find academics than to find practitioners who are willing to serve on prize committees, so extra effort is required by the president when appointing new committee members to assure that these committees include a sufficient and appropriate number of academics with applied experience and full-time practioners.

Done.  Professional Recognition Committee Chair (for 1996) Bob Abrams agreed with the spirit of this recommendation. 1996 President Al Blumstein carried it through, Geoffrion did the same in 1997, and so did Karla Hoffman in 1998.

The only prize that needs to have its selection criteria bent a bit more in the direction of practical applicability is the Lanchester. There are 5 criteria, and only the third pertains to application: "The new areas of application it opens up." This is a good criterion, but there are other application-related ways in which a contribution can be great. It is therefore suggested that an additional criterion be added: "The degree to which the contribution provides value for future applications, or enables improved practice". This language evolved in discussion with the 1996 Lanchester Prize Committee and the INFORMS Executive Committee.

Done. The Board approved this change at the 11/96 Atlanta meeting.

This prize, which was approved by the Board at the 11/96 Atlanta meeting, will uncover some fine teaching materials. It would be useful to establish a standard procedure for feeding such materials, or on-line links to them, to such outlets as OR/MS Today and the INFORMED Web site.

OR/MS Today Editor Peter Horner and 1997 INFORMED President Erhan Erkut are enthusiastic.  Geoffrion asked Thom Hodgson, chair of the 1997 Prize Committee, to cooperate and to revise his P&P Manual pages accordingly.

This would mean installing new procedures with all prize committees to make sure that prize citations and the good contributions they discover are put up in digital form on INFORMS Online. We should also work to see that links to each contribution are fed to other pertinent sites not under INFORMS control; for example, a notice of Pfizer's INFORMS Prize could have gone to the main Web sites serving the pharmaceutical industry, and prize papers that are mathematical could be announced to such Web sites as AMS's, MAA's, and SIAM's.

This added exposure would help to increase the honor associated with INFORMS prizes, better serve the membership, help inspire people to greatness, serve an important outreach function, and provide a significant social benefit. The last-mentioned benefit suggests that perhaps a governmental or foundation sponsor should be sought.

Geoffrion asked Eric Wolman (Professional Recognition Committee), Susan Albin (1997 Board Lisiaon for the Awards Group), Bob Armacost (1997 Board Liaison for Outreach, replaced in 1998 by Les Servi), the Information Technology Committee, and INFORMS Online Editor Mike Trick to look into this.

The IT Committee arranged an information feed from the INFORMS Office to INFORMS Online.  In June of 1997, INFORMS Online Associate Editor Steve Gould took the important step of putting up an extensive set of prize pages based in part on the new Prize Booklet (no bibliographic citations, abstracts, or full text).  In August, with INFORMS funding, Terry Harrison put all Edelman abstracts back to the beginning of the competition on-line.  In December, Alex Duffy and Geoffrion finished compiling essentially all available details on the Lanchester Prize, Nicholson Award, President's Award, and von Neumann Prize; this information is now on-line.  A volunteer has offered to implement a database-based prize information management system, and that offer presently is being evaluated.

The INFORMS Prize and Edelman Competition are great, but there are no awards for excellent practice of more modest ambition. One remedy would be to give some number of non-cash Merit Awards (pick your favorite name) each year. These would give a welcome boost to some successful practitioners who don't happen to work in a high-profile group or on mega-projects.

As a side benefit, these awards would generate new PR opportunities.

Partially done. It turns out that full-time practitioners in organized groups are not much interested. But the idea is more appealing to isolated practitioners, and in 1997 CPMS established the Daniel H. Wagner Prize For Excellence In Operations Research Practice.

One way to improve the practitioner orientation of INFORMS would be to conduct periodic (probably staggered) reviews by distinguished practitioners of all INFORMS activities and programs from the viewpoint of genuine value delivered to practitioners. Suggestions for improvement could be requested, as could ideas for new practitioner-oriented INFORMS products and services.

Dormant. Specific actions elsewhere in this document preempt many of the improvements likely to be suggested by such a review.

OR/MS has mostly missed all the "big waves" and management mantras (AI, TQM, BPR, etc.) even when we could ride them to greater prosperity during their time in favor. We need a way to sense them early, study their merit, determine what OR/MS has to offer, publicize them to the membership when this would serve a purpose, and help practitioners take advantage of these natural episodic opportunities.

Big wave management could benefit from a study of the greatest opportunities for each OR/MS practice segment during the last decade, with a compilation of examples of where these opportunities have been exploited successfully. Perhaps some INFORMS editors would like to commission an article or two along these lines. A similar study could be done of the greatest threats.

There are several possible steps that could be taken, including:

A) A standing task force of (mostly) practitioners could identify, discuss, and publicize within our community the Big Waves that are developing and how OR/MS could participate.

B) OR/MS Today could devote coverage to emerging and cresting Big Waves.

C) Big Waves could be discussed at INFORMS meetings in panels, tutorials, sessions, and even whole tracks. They could also be discussed at Roundtable meetings. INFORMS editors could be invited to attend, with a view toward identifying important new topics on which they may wish to commission or seek articles.

D) INFORMS editors as a group could elect to coordinate the detection and study of Big Waves in the pages of their journals. Given their academic orientation, the emphasis would likely be more on major developments in science and technology than with the senior-management-hot-buttons-in-the-making kinds of Big Waves that concern many non-academics. But dealing with Big Waves in our academic journals would be risky to our reputation unless we are able to maintain quality standards.

E) The VP-Practice and most journal editors' job descriptions could be modified to include some responsibility for Big Wave management.  Or journals could appoint an assistant editor to carry this responsibility.

What is the state of progress?

The Roundtable had a lively session on Big Waves at its 2/97 retreat. There was general agreement that INFORMS should not try to predict them, but rather should try to clarify the role of OR/MS in response to them. This will require expanded coverage of Big Waves at INFORMS meetings.

INFORMS Executive Director Randy Robinson declared his intent to champion this initiative in some detail to the Executive Committee on 3 August 1997, and in less detail within an article in the October 1997 issue of OR/MS Today.

As mentioned under item 11b, there was a joint meeting 10/97 in Dallas of the Board and the Roundtable on one particular Big Wave, namely electronic commerce. Discussion touched on steps that INFORMS could take to advance this initiative.

Collect and publish interview materials and statistics (esp. time series) aimed at supporting a longitudinal view of the OR/MS profession. Even the most basic data on the profession are not being collected at present. See the "Employment", "Exemplars", and "Obituaries" key questions of the 10/20/95 draft project plan guidelines for "A Question-Driven Study of Contemporary OR/MS Practice" at http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/informs/102095.htm#key (available on request for those not on the Web).

Dormant. It turns out that full-time practitioners in organized groups are not much interested, and no INFORMS champion is available at this time..

Universities are in a good position to develop career path data by practice segment by contacting OR/MS program alumni. Existing alumni records may already contain some pertinent data. Companies could take another cut by querying employees in, or known to have passed through, OR/MS. Analyses of such data would be useful for marketing OR/MS to students, for managing individual careers, for managing industrial OR/MS groups, and for planning ways in which INFORMS could better serve practitioners and help them find better jobs. There is also an important tie-in to item 22.

Al Soyster completed in 1996 a major job title review project for alumni of the IE department at Penn State. He points out that finding out where alumni are and what they are doing is a very labor-intensive task. Clearly we need to take a statistical rather than enumerative approach.

John Birge received a generally favorable reaction when he presented this idea to ACORD at the 11/96 Atlanta meeting. He is developing a modest, experimental, web-searchable database that others could easily add data to or download. It will include Al Soyster's data.

What role does the rapidly developing area of Information Technology play in each OR/MS practice segment? How is it changing the conduct of OR/MS? How have OR/MS groups fared when associated organizationally with IS or another IT-related group? How might it be useful for INFORMS to cooperate with ACM, the Computer Society, ICIS, or SIM? What value have the Internet and on-line services yielded organizationally and to OR/MS professionals in each OR/MS practice segment? What are the most promising areas for expanded Internet use, and why? Are there Net-based software distribution opportunities that make it practical for an isolated practitioner to use tools that would otherwise be unaffordable (e.g., via Bhargava and Krishnan's DecisionNet)?

An Editor or the Information Technology Committee might consider encouraging or commissioning reports on such questions, and more generally on the great and growing impact of IT and the Net on OR/MS. This could help our profession to more quickly exploit new technology-based opportunities.

Dormant. The questions posed above have been passed to Terry Harrison and Mohan Sodhi (the new cyberspace columnists of Interfaces and OR/MS Today) as possible seeds for future columns, to the IT Committee in case it wishes to look into some of them, to Mike Rothkopf and Peter Horner in case they wish to seek articles dealing with them, to ISR Editor John King, and to Mark Daskin in case he deems it appropriate to pass them on to INFORMS Editors.

The emphasis here is on full-time practitioners, but these ideas may be just as important for recruiting new academic members.

a) Identify and Study Neighboring Professional Communities

Other professional communities that involve OR/MS-related work are fertile hunting grounds for new members. Consider communities that are evolutionary offshoots of OR/MS and also those that had other origins. We can find these with help from INFORMS sections and societies and from INFORMS External Liaisons to other professional associations (see http://www.informs.org/General/liaison_full.html). For each community, identify the main associations and the main electronic affinity groups (esp. mail reflectors, news groups, Web sites) catering to it. Study what those associations and affinity groups offer that is most attractive to their members. Evaluate INFORMS' opportunities to reach out to these neighboring communities, and then do so. INFORMS' network of External Liaisons is solidifying and could be very helpful for these tasks.

This initiative was adopted as a 1997 priority by three committees: Bob Armacost's Outreach Committee, Julia Pet-Edwards' Membership and Member Services Committee, and Lew Pringle's Marketing Strategy Committee. The last of these launched a major Problem Detection Study at the Dallas meeting, as detailed in the committee's report to the Summer Interim Board Meeting.  The incoming 1998 chairs of these committees, respectively Les Servi, Dick Barr, and Arvind Rangaswamy will consider what to do in 1998.

Create a prospective member database. Feed it with a variety of information sources, including: lapsed ORSA and TIMS and INFORMS members, non-member national meeting attendees, subdivision members and meeting attendees who are not INFORMS members, non-member journal authors, OR/MS graduates whose names are supplied by cooperating schools, people identified in a "grapevine" campaign by Roundtable organizations and others (here a version of the kit mentioned under item 6 may be helpful), registrants in the new INFORMS Online Registry, people who have received a free trial subscription to OR/MS Today or Interfaces, judiciously purchased mail lists (postal or Email), "ballot boxes" at meetings of other professional associations at which INFORMS is represented, and participants in pertinent mail reflectors, news groups, and forums on the Web and on-line services. Stress people who have Email addresses, as these can be reached at no cost.

Recruit from the prospective member database. This requires suitable brochures, etc. The approach does not necessarily have to be for membership in INFORMS initially; it could be for participation in a way that does not require membership (e.g., come to a chapter or section meeting, take advantage of free INFORMS Online resources, subscribe to OR/MS Today or Interfaces).

This was a priority project during 1997 for Lisa Klose, Julia Pet-Edwards, and Lew Pringle.  A new Guide to Member Services brochure was produced, and on 2/16/97 Geoffrion wrote a comprehensive "Checklist of INFORMS Selling Points for Professionals" for limited distribution (updated most recently 10/20/97 and posted to the Fall Board Forum).  A major promotional mailing went out early in October, 1997.  The incoming 1998 chairs of the Membership and Member Services Committee (Dick Barr) and of the Marketing Strategy Committee (Arvind Rangaswamy) will consider what to do in 1998, as will incoming Board Liaison for Outreach Les Servi.

Mike Trick implemented a registry on INFORMS Online that is helping to identify prospective members: http://www.informs.org/Join/registry.html. It is surprisingly popular; just over 2,000 people registered as of 10/1/97, about 2/3 U.S. and 2/3 practitioners.

The aim is to educate effective practitioners in school, and then for INFORMS to help meet their continuing education needs indefinitely.

a) Professional Education in School

For undergraduate, masters, and Ph.D. education in OR/MS: which degrees, kinds of courses (e.g., domain-focused vs. theoretical), and pedagogical styles are most useful for each OR/MS practice segment, and why? Make this information available to schools and students.

Dormant. It turns out that full-time practitioners in organized groups are much more interested in the next idea.

What are the greatest continuing education needs, especially for workshops and seminars, for each segment of OR/MS practice, and why? Don't overlook topics that nominally fall outside OR/MS and its immediately supporting disciplines, like interpersonal communication and organizational intervention skills. Don't overlook Big Waves (item 18). Take steps to meet the needs not being met at present, including expanded offerings at INFORMS meetings and possibly stand-alone events. There are major revenue opportunities here, as well as major needs.

A 9/95 "INFORMS Task Force on Continuing Education/Workshops" report contains some important background and good ideas.

The Operational Research Society has an elaborate continuing education program; its offerings are described on-line at http://www.orsoc.org.uk/train/index_f.html, and they also publish a nice brochure that was made available in quantity for Board and Roundtable inspection at the 11/96 Atlanta meeting.

Ralph Nebiker prepared a white paper on how to move forward (Section P of the Board Book for the 11/96 Atlanta meeting). Briefly, he recommended three activities: (1) a new column in OR/MS Today fed as far as possible by INFORMS sections, (2) an on-line event lasting for some weeks, and (3) break-out "lab" offerings at the national meetings (these could be done within the current "Workshop" paradigm). This paper, which was reproduced for the Roundtable, was discussed in three separate Board and Roundtable sessions in Atlanta. There was broad support for a task force to mount an effort along these lines, and modest funds were appropriated.

Some work was done on the first activity to seek suitable papers. There was some discussion of the second activity, with organizational webification (item 11b) as a possible theme; according to Mike Trick, the technical side does not appear to be an obstacle. These beginnings came to a halt with Nebiker's 10/97 resignation.

INFORMS Executive Director Randy Robinson has declared his intent to champion a complementary continuing professional education activity, namely a catalog program along the lines of the one offered by ORS.  His intentions are described in some detail in a 8/3/97 memo to the Executive Committee, more briefly in part of an article in the October 1997 issue of OR/MS Today, and most recently in a set of notes dated 4/13/98 and titled "Brief Plan: INFORMS Catalog Program of Continuing Professional Education."  Preliminary planning has begun in collaboration with Dennis Fuller.

The Roundtable generously pledged to fund this initiative at the level of $6,000 to $10,000 per year for two years.

Tom Gulledge's Meetings Committee has adopted as one of its strategic objectives to "plan and implement stand-alone tutorial sessions" that will serve a continuing education function. Non-traditional digital presentation media will be considered.

John Llewellyn (Lionheart) considered publishing -- both on-line and in hard copy -- information on continuing education in conjunction with the Resource Directory, and creating a new advertising-based Continuing Education Opportunities section of OR/MS Today in 1998 if advertiser interest warranted.  Unfortunately, there was insufficient interest on the part of listers and advertisers.  Perhaps interest will pick up after the Robinson-Fuller effort puts INFORMS on the map for continuing professional education.  There has also been some discussion of a special section of OR/MS Today on this topic in a future issue and a "review editor" who would write reviews of continuing education courses offered on a regular basis. The latter is beyond the resources available to Lionheart, and will need INFORMS people or resources to accomplish.

Practitioners would benefit from a carefully organized on-line repository of information about practice. Include only things that would be of real value to practitioners. Include pointers to useful information elsewhere on the Net, and perhaps also a "seen elsewhere" feature that references printed resources. Design it so that portions can grow automatically from information contributed voluntarily by practitioners who access the knowledge base. For a checklist of possible resources, see the section on Data Sources near the end of the 10/20/95 draft project plan guidelines for "A Question-Driven Study of Contemporary OR/MS Practice" at http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/informs/102095.htm#data (available on request for those not on the Web).

Initiatives 7b and 11a contribute toward this end.  As a result of a major policy shift concerning the division of responsibility between Practice Online and INFORMS Online, the former has been improved a little and the latter will add a variety of resources of interest to full-time practitioners after it finds an Associate Editor for Practice.

Ramesh Sharda has some ideas on an approach to this sort of knowledge base that he calls a "Knowledge Network".

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