TITLE: Another Conference Changes Its Name
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: March 25, 2011  4:40 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
Ralph Johnson
<A HREF="http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/userblogs/ralph/blogView?showComments=true&printTitle=Modularity&entry=3477030397">
   reports</A>
that "the conference on aspect oriented software development
is renaming itself to 'Modularity'", much as
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2011-03.html#e2011-03-23T20_13_29.htm">
   OOPSLA has become SPLASH</A>.

For the last couple of decades, computer science research
has been focusing on more and more specific domains.  The
area of artificial intelligence, for example, soon spawned
journals and conferences devoted specifically to sub-areas
such as machine learning, expert systems, computer vision,
and many others.  It's interesting for me to see
conferences such as AOSD and OOPSLA going the other
direction, moving from the technology that spawned the
conference in the first place to the more general idea or
goal that motivates its community.

Of course, these conferences aren't purely academic; they
have always had a strong alliance between industry and
academia.  Perhaps that is one of the reasons they are
willing to rebrand themselves.  Certainly, the changing
economic model that drives this sort of conference is
playing a big role.

By the way, Ralph's entry isn't really about the changing
conference name.  He merely uses that as a launching point
for something more interesting: a first cut at cataloging
different types of modularity.  That is the best reason
to read it!
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