SPLASH History

SPLASH is a new ACM SIGPLAN conference dedicated to the art and science of software development. Its first official instance was in October of 2010. SPLASH has its roots in OOPSLA, a long-standing research conference in Object-Oriented Programming.

OOPSLA

In 1985 a group of 4 pioneers in object-oriented programming decided to plan and organize a North American conference on object-oriented programming systems. The group was Adele Goldberg, Tom Love, David Smith, and Allen Wirfs-Brock, and the conference was OOPSLA – Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications. The first OOPSLA was held at the Marriott Hotel in Portland, Oregon, in November 1986. About 600 people attended, about 50 papers were presented, and the attendees heard about Smalltalk, Lisp, Flavors, CommonLoops, Emerald, Trellis/Owl, Mach, Prolog, ABCL/1, prototypes, and distributed/concurrent programming from people like Danny Bobrow, Gregor Kiczales, Rick Rashid, Andrew Black, Dave Ungar, Henry Lieberman, Ralph Johnson, Dan Ingalls, Ward Cunningham, Kent Beck, Ivar Jacobson, and Bertrand Meyer.

This wide range of topics and researchers set the tone for the conference, which became the forum for some of the most important software developments over the last couple of decades. OOPSLA was the incubator for CRC cards, CLOS, design patterns, Self, the agile methodologies, service-oriented architectures, wikis, Unified Modeling Language (UML), test driven design (TDD), refactoring, Java, dynamic compilation, and aspect-oriented programming, to name just some of them. Never only about objects but never straying far from them, the conference grew from 600 attendees to around 2500 at its peak, and is still strong at around 1300 even after spawning off a series of patterns conferences, Eclipse and EclipseCon, the Agile conference, and AOSD.

Toward the end of the 1990s – in the wake of successes by Smalltalk and Java in business and C++ in engineering – OO went mainstream, and OOPSLA transitioned from a conference that worked at making OO practical and understandable to one that works at the problems of a changing computing world, both by devising new techniques and technologies and by extending and expanding theory. What has remained unchanged is a passion for innovation and a habit of building communities.

Onward!

In the early 2000's, many people in the OOPSLA community felt that OOPSLA would benefit from a new track publishing papers focused on innovative ideas beyond OO, and on forms of papers that normally wouldn't be accepted at OOPSLA. Speerheaded by Richard Gabriel, Onward! was born. Onward! was the first effort among ACM-sponsored conferences to give voice to "idea papers" within a framework of academic acceptability. Many other conferences have followed suit.

SPLASH

By the mid 2000's it was clear that the organizational structure binding OOPSLA and Onward! together needed to be refactored not just to allow these 2 tracks to co-exist on a equal basis but also to provide a framework for including new paper tracks, keeping the conference new and fresh. After several community discussions, it was finally decided to create a new umbrella conference -- SPLASH, the ACM Conference on Systems, Programming, Languages and Applications: Software for Humanity.

Since 2010, SPLASH has been the conceptual and administrative umbrella for OOPSLA, Onward!, a variety of other program events such as the Educators' Symposium, Experience Reports, Workshops, Panels, etc., and a variety of colocated events. OOPSLA is now 'just' the technical track of high-quality research papers that had been at the core of the OOPSLA Conference from the beginning. At the same time, OOPSLA has broadened the scope of topics of interest well beyond OO, and currently accepts a variety of programming-related papers. By creating SPLASH as the umbrella conference, the community can now sustain new paper tracks that don't fit in OOPSLA but that are closely related, therefore giving itself the space to innovate, just like it did with Onward!

SPLASH is proud of its OOPSLA heritage of creativity and openness.

The SPLASH website for the current year is always available at http://www.splashcon.org/.

SPLASH 2013

Conference Chair: Antony Hosking & Patrick Eugster

OOPSLA Program Chair: Cristina V. Lopes

Onward! Program Chair: Robert Hirschfeld

DLS Chair: Carl Friedrich Bolz

Indianopolis, Indiana

http://www.splashcon.org/2013/

SPLASH 2012

Conference Chair: Gary T. Leavens

OOPSLA Program Chair: Matthew B. Dwyer

Onward! Program Chair: Jonathan Edwards

DLS Chair: Alessandro Wrath

Tucson, Arizona

http://www.splashcon.org/2012/

SPLASH 2011

Conference Chair: Cristina V. Lopes

OOPSLA Program Chair: Kathleen Fisher

Onward! Program Chair: Eelco Visser

Wavefront Program Chair: Allen Wirfs-Brock

Portland, Oregon

http://www.splashcon.org/2011/

SPLASH 2010

Conference Chair: William R. Cook

OOPSLA Program Chair: Martin Rinard

Onward! Program Chair: Kevin Sullivan

Reno/Tahoe Nevada

http://www.splashcon.org/2010/

OOPSLA 2009

Conference Chair: Shail Arora

Program Chair: Gary Leavens

Onward! Chair: Bernd Bruegge

Orlando, Florida

http://www.oopsla.org/oopsla2009/

OOPSLA 2008

Conference Chair: Gail E. Harris

Program Chair: Gregor Kiczales

Onward! Chair: Dirk Riehle

Nashville, Tennessee

http://www.oopsla.org/oopsla2008_final/

OOPSLA 2007

Conference Chair: Richard P. Gabriel

Program Chair: David Bacon

Onward! Chair: Cristina V. Lopes

Montréal, Québec, Canada

http://www.oopsla.org/oopsla2007/

OOPSLA 2006

Conference Chair: Peri Tarr

Program Chair: William Cook

Onward! Chair: Robert Biddle

Portland, Oregon

http://www.oopsla.org/2006/

OOPSLA 2005

Conference Chair: Ralph Johnson

Program Chair: Richard P. Gabriel

San Diego, California

http://www.oopsla.org/2005/ShowPage.do?id=Home

OOPSLA 2004

Conference Chair: John Vlissides

Program Chair: Doug Schmidt

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

http://www.oopsla.org/2004/

OOPSLA 2003

Conference Chair: Ron Crocker

Program Chair: Guy L. Steele, Jr.

Anaheim, California

http://www.oopsla.org/2003/

OOPSLA 2002

Conference Chair: Mamdouh Ibrahim

Program Chair: Satoshi Matsuoka

Seattle, Washington

http://www.oopsla.org/2002/

OOPSLA 2001

Conference Chair: Linda Northrop

Program Chair: John Vlissides

Tampa, Florida

http://www.oopsla.org/2001/

OOPSLA 2000

Conference Chair: Mary Beth Rosson

Program Chair: Doug Lea

Minneapolis, Minnesota

http://www.oopsla.org/2000/

OOPSLA 1999

Conference Chair: Brent Hailpern

Program Chair: Linda Northrop

Denver, Colorado

http://www.sigplan.org/oopsla/oopsla99/

OOPSLA 1998

Conference Chair: Bjorn Freeman-Benson

Program Chair: Craig Chambers

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

http://www.acm.org/sigplan/oopsla/oopsla98/

OOPSLA 1997

Conference Chair: Mary Loomis

Program Chair: Toby Bloom

Atlanta, Georgia

http://www.acm.org/sigplan/oopsla/oopsla97/fp.html

OOPSLA 1996

Conference Chair: Lougie Anderson

Program Chair: James Coplien

San José, California

http://www.sigplan.org/oopsla/oopsla96/oopsla96.html

OOPSLA 1995

Conference Chair: Rebecca J. Wirfs-Brock

Program Chair: Mary Loomis

Austin, Texas

OOPSLA 1994

Conference Chair: Jeff McKenna

Program Chair: J. Eliot B. Moss

Portland, Oregon

OOPSLA 1993

Conference Chair: Timlynn Babitsky and Jim Salmons

Program Chair: Ralph Johnson

Washington, D.C.

OOPSLA 1992

Conference Chair: John Pugh

Program Chair: Rebecca J. Wirfs-Brock

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

OOPSLA 1991

Conference Chair: John Richards

Program Chair: Alan Snyder

Phoenix, Arizona

OOPSLA 1990

Conference Chair: David Thomas and Pierre Cointe

Program Chair: Akinori Yonezawa

Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

OOPSLA 1989

Conference Chair: George Bosworth

Program Chair: Kent Beck

New Orleans, Louisiana

OOPSLA 1988

Conference Chair: Alan Otis and Larry Tesler

Program Chair: Kurt Schmucker

San Diego, California

OOPSLA 1987

Conference Chair: Adele Goldberg and Chet Wisinski

Program Chair: Jerry L. Archibald

Orlando, Florida

OOPSLA 1986

Conference Chair: Daniel G Bobrow and Alan Purdy

Program Chair: Daniel Ingalls

Portland, Oregon