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<\/h2>\n<\/h2>\nToday was the last day of the user meeting, a further half-day celebrating 50 years of APL<\/a>, with presentations both looking back at the history of APL from its beginnings to the present day, and looking forward to the future and how it can reach new audiences. In that vein, Roberto Minervini, a teacher from Italy, brought four of his maths students to show how they use\u00a0imagery to help understand APL concepts – culminating in a picture-based prize contest for the audience to to play on their mobile devices. The winners of that contest were: John Daintree, Jay Foad,\u00a0Luana Maria Delmonte,\u00a0Stefano Lanzavecchia and, in first place, Brian Becker.<\/p>\n Luana Maria Delmonte<\/p><\/div>\n This afternoon the user meeting ends with the remaining four workshop sessions.<\/p>\n The banquet dinner is always a lavish event – a great occasion to get to know your fellow APLers better whilst enjoying the food and wine that Gitte has carefully selected. This year\u2019s was no exception \u2013 a feast of Scottish fare with a traditional piper and an address to the haggis<\/a>.<\/p>\n Addressing the haggis<\/p><\/div>\n This was the evening that Morten and Gitte were presented with their Iverson Awards.<\/p>\n The Kenneth E. Iverson Award\u00a0is bestowed at the discretion of\u00a0the Special Interest Group on APL of the\u00a0Association for Computing Machinery<\/a>\u00a0(ACM SIGAPL). We were honoured to have four past winners at the user meeting and they\u00a0were introduced by Brian at the start of the banquet – Ray Polivka (1990 winner),\u00a0John Scholes (1995),\u00a0Roger Hui (1996) and\u00a0Roy Sykes (1998).\u00a0\u00a0Following this,\u00a0Paul Grosvenor, managing director of\u00a0Optima Systems<\/a>\u00a0and chairman of the\u00a0British APL Association<\/a>, presented the 2016 award jointly to Morten and Gitte, for\u00a0Outstanding Contribution to the Development and Application of APL.<\/p>\n L-R: Morten Kromberg, John Scholes, Gitte Christensen, Ray Polivka, Roger Hui, Roy Sykes, Paul Grosvenor<\/p><\/div>\n Later in the evening there was an award presentation almost<\/em> as prestigious – to the winners of the Stormwind competition. The contest had been\u00a0for teams of two (a driver and a navigator in each) with the aim being to get safely from one point to another as quickly as possible. Congratulations to the winning teams: Andrea Arbaci and Moris Zucca (APL Italiana<\/a>), Silvia Bossi and Guido Montagwani (also APL Italiana) and in first place: Mike Mingard and Jenny Hopcraft (Optima Systems<\/a>).<\/p>\n Gitte took us through the use of APL through the decades and showed how it has changed from time-sharing to bespoke development over consulting to commercial software packages. She pointed out that APL is ideally suited for mode 2 in the Bimodal IT development \u00a0model<\/a> coined by the Gartner group in 2015.<\/p>\n Our venue this year has been The Golden Jubilee Hotel –\u00a0a name very\u00a0fitting for an event celebrating the golden jubilee of APL. It is around 15 minutes from central Glasgow and several delegates have taken the opportunity to visit not only Glasgow itself but also nearby Loch Lomond and local distilleries. The hotel is a dedicated conference centre and thus has had excellent facilities for the event.<\/p>\n The Golden Jubilee Hotel<\/p><\/div>\n The hotel directly adjoins the Golden Jubilee National Hospital and is part of the Golden Jubilee Foundation, which is\u00a0run within the Scottish\u00a0National Health Service.<\/p>\n It\u2019s been an exhilarating few days \u2013 Saturday seems so long ago now! Dyalog \u201916 is now coming to an end but Morten and Roger are already en-route to Bangalore to present to a new audience at Functional Conf<\/a> from Saturday. Meanwhile, the countdown to Dyalog \u201917 begins now!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today was the last day of the user meeting, a further half-day celebrating 50 years of APL, with presentations both looking back at the history of APL from its beginnings to the present day, and looking forward to the future … Continue reading ![\"Luana](\"http:\/\/www.dyalog.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Luana-300x300.jpg\")
<\/a>Last night’s banquet\u00a0dinner – featuring\u00a0some prestigious awards<\/h2>\n
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<\/a>![\"Iverson](\"http:\/\/www.dyalog.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/IA-1024x682.jpg\")
<\/a>Discussion Point:\u00a0APL at 50<\/h2>\n
The Golden Jubilee Hotel<\/h2>\n
![\"The](\"http:\/\/www.dyalog.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Hotel-1024x682.jpg\")
<\/a>Signing off<\/h2>\n