SACS ´07

Konferenz und Festveranstaltung "30 Jahre Informatik"

The Symposium, called SACS (Significant Advances in Computer Science) was an excellent conference. If you look at the program and the list of speakers, most of them world-famous, you will know what I mean. Since the presentations have been of such excellent quality speakers will be encouraged to submit their papers to J.UCS (www.jucs.org), so keep looking there for many excellent contributions beyond what appears there, anyway, each month! You will also find pictures from the conference on this site.

As part of the conference the establishment of a Fraunhofer Working Group ("Projektgruppe") was announced at a press conference: this will mean that the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics in Darmstadt will set up a subgroup in Graz, creating as we believe a win-win situation, strengthening both Graz and Darmstadt.
(Have a look at the press release (in German) and three pictures from the press conference - Foto 1 / Foto 2 / Foto 3)

The Celebration started with speeches by dignitaries from federal and provincial government, by an address of a representative of the city of Graz, the president of the Austrian Computer Science and the President of Graz University of Technology.

The computer science activities in Graz before 1977 were presented by Professor Reinhard Posch, the years 1977-2007 by Dean Professor Hermann Maurer, and the current status by Vice Dean Karl Christian Posch. We then had a very dynamic glimpse into the future by Professor Franz Leberl, who will guide the School as new Dean starting January 2008.
You can see the presentations of R. Posch (PPT), H. Maurer (PPT) and K-C. Posch (PPT) or
you have a look at Austria Forum.

This was followed by some more down-to-Earth remarks by Professor Eichhorn, who combined quotes from Faust with some ironic remarks concerning computer science.

As last and substantial highlight we had a show of jugglers and dancers that was created particularly for this event: it portrayed the history of computer science from the area of punched cards, then guiding through some computer games like Packman and Little Brick Out, culminating in a real crash of a computer (it was smashed on the floor), and with the actors suddenly wearing glasses as often predicted by myself as future replacements of screens and other input-output devices. Thanks go to all that hatched such creative and entertaining ideas!

The gala-dinner stretched well into midnight with a number of friends still giving short speeches. Among other things I learnt that I am related to Professor Stucky in the sense that, if we go back to our doctor fathers, their doctor fathers, etc., we end up at the same person: Felix Klein!

I hope all enjoyed the day as much as I did. My special thanks go to all who did the preparation and the work. I think it fair to say that Anke Beckmann, Ingrid Preininger and Maria-Luise Lampl carried the most heavy load and did an excellent job, but my thanks must also go to Inge Schinnerl, Dana Kaiser, Roswitha Hammer, Patrick Höfler, Karl Trummer, the Team of Professor Fellner, and last but not least to our sponsors without whose contributions we could not have offered such an event free of charge.

Finally, I owe a big thank you to all speakers and the large crowd (some 550) that attended, often flying in from far away.

Hermann Maurer