Dyalog ’20 – Recordings Now Available

We are happy to announce that the full set of recordings from Dyalog ’20 online is now available. So if you missed the all or any of the talks, or would like to revisit one of the presentations, head over to https://dyalog.tv/Dyalog20!

It was disappointing not to be enjoying Portuguese food and drink with you all in Olhão. On the other hand, it was wonderful to be able to share our plans and user stories with so many people who would not normally be able to travel to one of our user meetings. According to the statistics, we had about twice the usual number of attendees, and Dyalog ’20 may have been the largest gathering of APL users in the last quarter century!

We learned that we need to invest in better microphones and find better solutions for chat both during and between the presentations, but in general we feel that the online format worked so well that we are making plans to run similar events in the future, even if international travel restrictions should ease and we are able to meet many of you face to face in Portugal this coming October. We are still thinking about the details, but it is likely that we will host an online meeting each spring with a focus on new users of Dyalog APL, while the autumn (fall) meeting will continue to provide experienced users with the usual “deep dive”.

We are also planning to offer workshops and other training sessions at other times of the year, and continue the regular series of webinars. Travel restrictions are helping to accelerate our plans to provide a steadily increasing quantity of online material. If there is sufficient interest, I am willing to expand my talk on Docker containers into a half-day “Bring Your Own Application” workshop early in 2021. If you would like to attend this workshop, or you have ideas for other topics for webinars, workshops or talks at future user meetings, please write to usermeeting@dyalog.com and tell us about it!

Welcome Ron Murray

Ron flying in 2003

Ron Murray is a recent addition to the Dyalog team, with a long history in the APL community. He first encountered APL/360 in 1969 and was hooked. He used it as the basis for teaching Computer Science courses for the Hampton, Virginia High Schools. Then, working with other APL pioneers, he wrote several APL applications and contributed to five different APL implementations at The Computer Company, STSC, Burroughs, Data Resources, and Analogic Corporation.

From 1986 until 2019 he left the world of APL to develop software on Microcomputers for Microsoft and Amazon, where he contributed to various development projects for Windows, OS/2, NT, Visual Basic, Encarta, and a variety of projects within the Microsoft Research Division as well the Developer Relations Group. He also contributed to the scalability and reliability of the Amazon transaction accounting system and the Windows Azure Archival Storage System.

He also ran an Aviation business for several years at the Tacoma Narrows airport, and started an internet television company with three friends. Together they learned a lot about crawling the web using machine learning, categorizing videos by their subject matters and quality, as well as constructing interactive user interfaces on IOS devices.

During all that non-APL work he continued to use APL as a tool of thought for organizing, analyzing, and clarifying the work that needed to be done.

Since July of 2020 he’s been applying the many non-APL things he’s learned to help extend and improve the Dyalog APL systems and their interactions with the rest of the computing world.

He points out that Windows 95, which is now 25 years old is about half as old as the APL/360 release!

Welcome Kirstine (Stine) Kromberg

Stine graduated from Copenhagen Business School with a Masters degree in Business Administration and Information Management in 2016, and went to work for a small consultancy firm. She started with “Drag&Drop” programming in SSIS and other similar tools, but quickly moved into project management, accounting, and Business Intelligence.

Covid-19 intervened just as she was looking forward to coming back from maternity leave, and she decided not to burden her previous employer by returning to a job as a consultant in a world where no-one really wanted external consultants for an unknown length of time. Since Dyalog was looking for a new accountant due to Helene’s retirement, she accepted that job. She hopes that she will soon have an opportunity to help the development team with project management as well.

If her last name sound somewhat familiar, it is because Stine is closely related to Gitte and Morten! Stine grew up in a household where APL was a part of everyday life. After swimming against the tide for many years she finally accepted a bet with Morten to give his “hobby” (APL) a try if he gave her hobby (Roleplaying) a try in return. As a result, she spent 2 weeks in Montreal trying to learn from one of the best teachers of APL. But while she learned a little French from staying at Dan Baronet’s house, the APL did not really stick. Morten sadly never got around to roleplaying, but he did take up Zumba many years later, so they consider the deal settled!

Several years later, while looking for something to do as a summer job, she took a job at Insight Systems learning APL while proofreading the new Dyalog APL book by Bernard Legrand and correcting data in the CRM system.

For several years she was hired to help run the help desk at the user meetings whenever they took place in Denmark. Her last appearance at a Dyalog user meeting was as a Zumba instructor in 2012 in Elsinore.

Stine has spent most of her life dancing around the edges of Dyalog, coming to the user meetings and chatting with customers and developers alike, hanging out at the office in Bramley, listening in whenever Gitte and Morten talked shop at the dinner table, trying to learn APL, but realizing that where her heart truly lies is in organizing and managing things. So, while working for an APL company feels like coming home, her ambition is not to take part in development, but instead to take care of all the details and bureaucracy so that the rest of our brilliant team can focus on what they truly love!