NOTES ON A CONVERSATION WITH BOB KAHN ON THE ICCC

I called Bob Kahn and had a good chat with him about some aspects of the ICCC meeting demonstration. The points discussed and his answers were the following.

What is the physical environment going to be like?

Bob has arranged for the Georgetown Ballroom of the Hilton Hotel; it has 3000 square feet probably about 75x40 (exact dimensions are not known to Bob at this time).

A carpeted false floor is to be installed and there will be a partition for an area to show a movie on resource sharing which will run more or less continuously.

There will not be booths in the normal sense but details
are not yet worked out. Bob expects to have tables arranged around the room holding 1 or 2 terminals and low 4 ft. partitions to break up the space.

Who will man the booths?

Bob presently expects many terminals to be unmanned, although manufcturers could have a sales rep.

There will probably be people from net sites at some of them from time to time to demonstrate their programs.

We discussed the need for lots of experts from the network around who can answer questions and help people. Bob is in favor of such a thing but has not had time yet to pull such a group together and there is some uncertainty if enough people will volunteer, his initial approach to people yielded lots of people interested but with other things to
do.

When will the equipment be on the floor and available to try

there?

The conference is tues-thurs oct 24-26 and at the moment
the room is only going to be available from the 22nd. This seems to be a short time to install floor, TIP, terminals, phone lines, etc and Bob is going to try to get the room the previous Wed or Fri, but doesn't know yet.

Bob would like to have working demo with terminals,

resources at BBN in Aug.

What resources are presently committed?

UCLA Klinerock will have some network measurement stuff to demonstrate.

Stanford AI has indicated they will have some programs to demone.

Utah Tony Hearn will have his Reduce program to demo, Berry Wessler plans to demo something, Harvey Greenfield has some sort of mdical program.

RAND before recent sakeup indicated iterest, status now not known.

SDC will have some natural language programs and their data management systems.

MIT Vezza and Kahn are looking into having some hardcopy device such as Photon attached to a GE TS system. Al has some other things to demo.

Bob has contacted a number of non net sources such as the NY Times (data base), Eastern Airlines etc., but has no definite commitments yet.

We at ARC will of course have a number of things to
demonstrate.

This ARPANET demo is the only show at the conference. Larry

Roberts has invited the ASIS people over for Thurs afternoon.

The TIP has at this time never been tested with 64 terminals, but they are going to be putting as many terminal on as possible during July and testing the terminal to be supplied ford the conference.

Starting about AUg 1 he expects to start testing to see what

terminals work with what resources and what glitches exist.

I asked Bob if we could have enough space for a ARC NIC booth with an IMLAC TI and room for people to watch our demo's. Bob saw no problem there; IMLAC has committed 2 terminals and we can have one. TI has not indicated they plan to loan terminal for the show. Hiram French is the man from IMLAC who is supposed to call us. If there are more than 64 terminal or
the TIP can't support all, then they will have to schedule terminal connections to the TIP.

Bob is not sure who will be at the conference, its theme is networks and their impact on soceity, implications for regulation etc. so ther should be a broad spectrum of people; will send me a program.

We talked about what kind of documentation help, signs etc
will be around to help people connect and use resources and generally understand wha the deomo is allabout.

Bob's present picture is some large 2x3 signs in the lobby outside the main lecture room directing people to the demo and then some signs inside explaining what's happening, a card with some TIP commands,resources, a brochure with actual scenerios of resource usage, the movie and some
people as the main on the floor sources of help.

We talked about the need to coordinate all this with NIC documentation and our desire to help design all this. Bob
and I are tentatively planning to get together the weekend of July 7 here to plan this. We need to have thoughtcthrough ahead of time what we think should be done.

ARPA except for Bob does not seem to have set up any budget for this show except what their contractors are essentially willing to give as part of their ongoing research, therefore he has a very difficult job of pulling off such a large show without more help than he seems to have gotten so far (these are my conclusions not satements of his).