Ada-Belgium Meetings and Conferences

• an annual General Assembly (in the first half of the year);
• workshops and tutorials on Ada related topics;
• a series of technical presentations and workshops on techniques such as
  • parallelism (o.a. in numeric applications);
  • distribution;
  • object-orientation (incl. multiple-inheritance);
  • installing and using Ada on Windows platforms;
  • graphics;
  • quality & metric tools;
  • etc.
  and on the use of Ada in specific sectors, well-known but also "new" sectors such as for:
  • medical applications;
  • financial applications;
  • etc.
• Ada-Belgium Board meetings (by invitation only);
• an annual one-day Seminar (depending on the available volunteers);
• an annual Ada Exhibition (depending on the level of interest).

Feel free to contact us with suggestions about topics you would like to see presented.

Below you'll find pointers to more information about our events, often including copies of the presentations.

Future events

• The annual General Assembly is always held in the first half of the year. If you're interested in specific topics for a co-located technical presentation, or a separate technical presentation at another time, or something more informal like the Ada-Belgium Spring Events (see below), feel free to send us suggestions!

• Another "Ada-Belgium Spring Event" might be organized in the future, depending on the interest and commitment of our members. Those events are held on a weekend day, include an informal lunch, some technical topics, and lots of opportunity for discussions.

• If there are enough potential presentations, we might once more work on a proposal for a dedicated Ada Developer Room at an international event, such as maybe at FOSDEM'2014, to be held in February that year in Brussels, or alternatively at another event of the same style. Join the Ada-FOSDEM mailing list to discuss and help organize the details.

• Other events: TBA.
  Some ideas:
  • We'd like to prepare more evening presentations in cooperation with vendors, where they will present (some of) the technology they are providing the Ada community.
    Contact us if you are interested to give/get a presentation on a specific topic!
  • We are looking into the possibilities of organizing additional sessions of our Ada course. The first two runs of the course (winter 1998-99 & early 2001) covered the Ada 95 language itself, topics now could be more focused on application domains (such as graphics, financial software, scientific applications, Windows, etc.) and techniques (such as memory management, bindings, Ada design patterns, etc.), but also for example open-source projects, Ada on Linux, etc. Suggestions and/or help welcome!
  • With the Ada standard being updated regularly, we are considering to organize in depth training sessions on the new or improved language features in Ada 2005 and in the upcoming Ada 2012 standard. If you have ideas about the prefered level for such sessions (upcoming features only, Ada 2005 features only, Ada 95 & 2005 for Ada 83 programmers, Ada 2005 for non-Ada programmers, ...), feel free to contact us.
  • Some time, we hope to organize again our annual Ada-Belgium full day Seminar. The main issue is to find enough volunteers to help with the organization. If you'd like to cooperate with us, e.g. by submitting a paper, or volunteering to present an experience report, or helping with the logistics, etc, etc, feel free to contact us as soon as possible.

(Contact Ada-Belgium if your company would like to sponsor or cooperate on one of our events.)

Past events

• On Sunday, February 3, 2013, we organized once more an Ada track at the Free and Open-Source Developers' Meeting (FOSDEM'2013). For more information, see Ada at FOSDEM'2013, where you'll find the program, abstracts, speakers' bios, and copies of all presentations, as well as some pictures taken at the event.

• The Ada-Belgium Spring 2012 Event took take place on Saturday, May 12, 2012 in the Wavre area, south of Brussels. For the fifth year in a row, Ada-Belgium organized this kind of event, which started at noon, ran until 7pm, and included an informal barbecue, a key signing party, the 19th General Assembly of the organization, and a two-part workshop consisting of a recorded presentation by Robert Dewar on Ada, and a practical hands-on experience on packaging Ada software for Debian with Ludovic Brenta, principal maintainer of Ada in Debian.
  See the Ada-Belgium Spring 2012 Event pages for more information.

• On Saturday, February 4, 2012, we organized once more an Ada track at the Free and Open-Source Developers' Meeting (FOSDEM'2012). For more information, see Ada at FOSDEM'2012, where you'll find the program, abstracts, speakers' bios, and copies of all presentations.

• The Ada-Belgium Spring 2011 Event took place on Sunday, May 22, 2011 in Brussels. For the fourth year in a row, Ada-Belgium organized this kind of event, which started at noon, ran until 7pm, and included an informal lunch, a key signing party, the 18th General Assembly of the organization, and a workshop on packaging Ada software for Debian hosted by Ludovic Brenta, principal maintainer of Ada in Debian.
  See the Ada-Belgium Spring 2011 Event pages for more information.

• We submitted once more a proposal for an Ada track at the Free and Open-Source Developers' Meeting (FOSDEM'2011), held on Saturday, February 5, and Sunday, February 6, 2011. Unfortunately, although the organizers felt is was a very strong proposal they decided nevertheless not to accept it. There finally was some Ada content at the event anyway, as two of "our" speakers gave a joint 1.5 hour presentation at the CrossDistro DevRoom, entitled "Ada in Debian and Other Distributions".
  For the Call for Speakers, our proposal for a dedicated Ada Developer Room on both days of the event, as well as information on the CrossDistro presentation, see Ada at FOSDEM'2011.

• The Ada-Belgium Spring 2010 Event took place on Saturday, June 5, 2010 in Leuven. For the third year in a row, Ada-Belgium organized this kind of event, which started at noon, ran until 7pm, and included a barbecue, a key signing party, the 17th General Assembly of the organization, and a workshop on packaging Ada software for Debian hosted by Ludovic Brenta, principal maintainer of Ada in Debian.
  See the Ada-Belgium Spring 2010 Event pages for more information.

• On February 23, 2010, together with the Department of Computer Science at the K.U.Leuven, we organized a half-day seminar for the Belgian educational and research community, entitled Technology Update: Ada and SPARK for Education and Research . With speakers from AdaCore, Praxis, Eurocontrol/CFMU and the university of Stuttgart, the event focused on the technical advantages of these programming languages, the tools and support available for academics, as well provided an insight into their academic and industrial use through real-life case studies. More information, including abstracts, short bios, as well as copies of all presentations, is available on the event's web pages.

• We submitted once more a proposal for an Ada track at the Free and Open-Source Developers' Meeting (FOSDEM'2010), held on Saturday, February 6, and Sunday, February 7, 2010. Unfortunately, this year it was not accepted by the organizers. For the Call for Interest, as well as our proposal for a dedicated Ada Developer Room on both days of the event, see Ada at FOSDEM'2010.

• The Ada-Belgium Spring 2009 Event took place on Sunday, May 17, 2009 in Leuven. The Ada-Belgium Board decided to repeat the more interactive and social format that was introduced last year (compared to our traditional evening events based on a General Assembly followed by a technical presentation). Therefore, this event once more started at noon, ran until 7pm, and included a barbecue, a key signing party, the 16th General Assembly of the organization, and a workshop on packaging Ada software for Debian hosted by Ludovic Brenta, principal maintainer of Ada in Debian.
  See the Ada-Belgium Spring 2009 Event pages for more information.

• On Saturday, February 7, and Sunday, February 8, 2009, we organized once more an Ada track at the Free and Open-Source Developers' Meeting (FOSDEM'2009). For this edition, the organizers accepted our proposal for a dedicated Ada Developer Room on both days of the event (vs. one day in 2006, see below). For more information, see Ada at FOSDEM'2009, where you'll find the program, abstracts, speakers' bios, and copies of all presentations, as well as some pictures taken at the event.

• The Ada-Belgium Spring 2008 Event took place on Sunday, May 18, 2008 in Leuven. The Ada-Belgium Board decided to propose a more interactive and social format than our traditional evening events based on a General Assembly followed by a technical presentation. Therefore, this event started at noon, ran until 7pm, and included a barbecue, a key signing party, the 15th General Assembly of the organization, and a workshop on packaging Ada software for Debian hosted by Ludovic Brenta, principal maintainer of Ada in Debian.
  See the Ada-Belgium Spring 2008 Event pages for more information.

• We have been planning another Ada track at The Free and Open-Source Developers' Meeting (FOSDEM'2008), which was held in Brussels in February 2008. Although we already had speaker commitments for close to a full day of presentations, we unfortunately didn't manage to obtain one of the Developers Rooms...

• The 2007 Ada-Belgium General Assembly was held on Tuesday, June 12, 2007, 18:45, at the U.L.B., Department of Computer Science, Boulevard du Triomphe / Triomflaan, B-1050 Brussels. After the G.A., at 19:45, Ludovic Brenta of Barco Avionics, Belgium, gave a technical presentation entitled "Ada at Barco Avionics: history, coding standards, and products". Check the 2007 Ada-Belgium General Assembly Web-pages for more information, including a copy of the presentation.

• Unfortunately, we didn't manage to get a slot for another Ada track at The Free and Open-Source Developers' Meeting (FOSDEM'2007) which was held in Brussels on 24 and 25 February 2007.

• An extraordinary 2006 Ada-Belgium General Assembly was held on Monday, October 16, 2006, 20:00, at the U.L.B., Department of Computer Science, Boulevard du Triomphe / Triomflaan, B-1050 Brussels. Check the extraordinary 2006 Ada-Belgium General Assembly Web-pages for more information.

• The 2006 Ada-Belgium General Assembly was held on Tuesday, June 20, 2006, 18:45, at the U.L.B., Department of Computer Science, Boulevard du Triomphe / Triomflaan, B-1050 Brussels. After the G.A., at 19:45 Tullio Vardanega of the University of Padua, Italy, gave a technical presentation entitled "Correctness by construction: UML2 profile enforcing the Ravenscar Computational Model". Check the 2006 Ada-Belgium General Assembly Web-pages for more information, including a copy of the presentation.

• The Free and Open-Source Developers' Meeting (FOSDEM) is an annual event held in Brussels, Belgium. It attracts several thousands of enthusiasts from all over Europe. The 2006 edition took place on Saturday February 25 and Sunday February 26, 2006.
  Ada-Belgium has organized a series of presentations related to Ada, held in a dedicated developers' room, all day Sunday. Check the Ada at FOSDEM 2006 pages for the program, abstracts, and more information, including a copy of all presentations.

• The 2005 Ada-Belgium General Assembly was held on Monday, April 11, 2005, 19:00, at the U.L.B., Department of Computer Science, Boulevard du Triomphe / Triomflaan, B-1050 Brussels. After the G.A., at 20:00, Patricia Langle of Aonix France presented their "Eclipse plug-in for Ada (ObjectAda or GNAT)", and at 20:15 Jean-Pierre Rosen of Adalog, France, gave a technical presentation entitled "Web-enabling Ada Applications with AWS". Check the 2005 Ada-Belgium General Assembly Web-pages for more information and a copy of both presentations.

• The 2004 Ada-Belgium General Assembly was held on Thursday, March 18, 2004, 19:00, at the U.L.B., Department of Computer Science, Boulevard du Triomphe / Triomflaan, B-1050 Brussels. After the G.A., at 20:00, Pascal Leroy of IBM France and chairman of the ISO Ada Rapporteur Group gave a technical presentation entitled "An Invitation to Ada 2005". Check the 2004 Ada-Belgium General Assembly Web-pages for more information and an updated copy of his presentation.

• The 2003 Ada-Belgium General Assembly was held on Tuesday, February 25, 2003, 19:00, at the U.L.B., Department of Computer Science, Boulevard du Triomphe / Triomflaan, B-1050 Brussels. There we (finally!) also announced the winners of Ada-Belgium's Ada Contest. After the G.A., at 20:00, Marc Lalo of PolySpace Technologies (France) gave a technical presentation entitled "Next generation testing tools for embedded applications: Apply abstract interpretation to automatically detect run-time errors at compilation time". Check the 2003 Ada-Belgium General Assembly Web-pages for more information.

• On Tuesday, June 25th, 2002, 20:00, at the new premises of Offis nv/sa - Aubay Group in Brussels, Ada-Belgium organized a technical presentation on Automatic Analysis and Manipulation on Source Code by Jean-Christophe Real of RainCode (Brussels, Belgium).

• The 2002 Ada-Belgium General Assembly was held on Wednesday, February 20, 2002, 19:00, at the U.L.B., Department of Computer Science, Boulevard du Triomphe / Triomflaan, B-1050 Brussels. After the G.A., at 20:00, Pierre Morere (Aonix, France) presented an "Aonix Technical Update". Check the 2002 Ada-Belgium General Assembly Web-pages for more information.

• End of 2001, early 2002, we organized Ada-Belgium's Ada Contest. Due to the many entries received from all over the world, the judging process required quite some effort, and the announcement of the winners was scheduled to happen at a future Ada-Belgium event.

• In 2001, the Ada-Europe conference took place the week of May 14-18, 2001, in the historic center of Leuven, Belgium. Together with the Department of Computer Science of the K.U.Leuven, Ada-Belgium organized this 6th International Conference on Reliable Software Technologies - Ada-Europe'2001.
  After the very successful Ada-Europe'2000 conference the year before in Potsdam, the 2001 conference came to Belgium, which due to its central location and good communications allowed people to attend easily. We got strong support for this event and had participants from 20 countries all over the world.
  Check out the link above: it points to the Conference web-site which contains much more information, including the full program and lots of pictures taken at the conference and the social events.

• The 2001 Ada-Belgium General Assembly was held on Wednesday, February 21, 2001, 18:00, at the U.L.B., Department of Computer Science, Boulevard du Triomphe / Triomflaan, B-1050 Brussels. After the G.A., at 19:00, the 3rd session of our Ada course started at the same place. Check the 2001 Ada-Belgium General Assembly Web-pages for more information.

• Learn Ada! Starting early 2001, we scheduled again our successful course teaching Ada 95.
  This was an updated version of our Ada 95 course taught two years before, offering a new opportunity for those who couldn't attend the first time or who are new "on the Ada scene".
  The course was modular: you could skip modules discussing subjects you already knew about without losing the thread of the course. The first module was an introduction to Ada for programmers in other languages. After this the modules were of interest to both newcomers to Ada and those already working in Ada 83 who wished to learn Ada 95.
  The course took the form of evening sessions every two weeks. There were small exercises during the evening sessions and larger exercises which could be completed between sessions. Ada compilers were available for the completion of these exercises. Registration was free of charge. See the Ada Course Home Page for more information.

• The Ada-Belgium'2000 workshop, a slightly scaled down version of our annual Ada-Belgium Seminar (due to much effort being needed for preparing the Ada-Europe'2001 Conference), was held on Friday afternoon, December 15, 2000, at the U.L.B. in Brussels. Theme of the Workshop was "Portable GUI development with GtkAda". Check the Ada-Belgium'2000 Home Page for more information.

• On Thursday, June 8th, 2000, 18:30, at the Department of Computer Science of the K.U. Leuven, Ada-Belgium organized a technical presentation on Component Based Development by Rachid Saoui of Aonix. Check the link above for more information.

• The 2000 Ada-Belgium General Assembly was held on Wednesday, February 23, 2000, 19:00, at the U.L.B., Department of Computer Science, Boulevard du Triomphe / Triomflaan, B-1050 Brussels. At 20:00, Philippe Waroquiers (Eurocontrol, Belgium) gave a technical presentation plus Q&A on "Experiences porting large applications from Ada 83 to Ada 95". Check the 2000 Ada-Belgium General Assembly Web-pages for more information.

• Ada-Belgium'99, the 9th annual Ada-Belgium Seminar, was held on Friday, November 19, 1999, at the Groot Begijnhof in Leuven. Theme of the Seminar was "Ada 95 Works!". We had an international mix of high standard speakers. Check the Ada-Belgium'99 Web-pages for more information.

• The 1999 Ada-Belgium General Assembly was held on Thursday, February 11, 1999, 20:00, at the K.U.Leuven, Campus Arenberg III, Celestijnenlaan 200, B-3001 Leuven (Heverlee). From 19:00 to 20:00, Jerry van Dijk (Ordina Finance, the Netherlands) gave a 1-hour technical presentation plus Q&A on "A comparison of two 'free' Ada95 compilers for Win32".

• Ada-Belgium'98, the 8th annual Ada-Belgium Seminar, was held on Friday, December 4, 1998, at the U.L.B., Boulevard du Triomphe / Triomflaan, B-1050 Brussels. Theme of the Seminar was "Concurrency & Real-Time". We had a mix of longer tutorial-like presentations and shorter experience reports or product presentations; given by speakers both from the s.c. Ada vendors and the Ada users. Check the Ada-Belgium'98 Web-pages for more information.

• Learn Ada 95! Ada-Belgium ran a course during the autumn of 1998 teaching Ada 95.
  The course was modular: you could skip modules discussing subjects you already knew about without losing the thread of the course. The first module was an introduction to Ada for programmers in other languages. After this the modules were of interest to both newcomers to Ada and those already working in Ada 83 who wished to learn Ada 95.
  The course took the form of evening sessions every two weeks. There were small exercises during the evening sessions and larger exercises which could be completed between sessions. Ada compilers were available for the completion of these exercises. Registration was free of charge. See the Ada Course Home Page for more information.

• In March 1998, Ada-Belgium has held a little survey about the kind of activities our members and others interested would like us to organize. Your input is still appreciated! Just fill out the questionnaire and send it to us (e-mail preferred). Thanks in advance.

• The 1998 Ada-Belgium General Assembly was held on Monday, February 16, 1998, at 17:30, at the U.L.B., Department of Computer Science, Boulevard du Triomphe / Triomflaan, B-1050 Brussels.

• Ada-Belgium'97, the 7th annual Ada-Belgium Seminar, was held at Trasys in Brussels, on Friday, November 28, 1997. Theme of the Seminar was "Developing Distributed Applications". Several approaches were be presented (CORBA, DCE, Ada 95 Distributed Systems Annex, etc.) as well as practical experiences, available products, etc. Check the Ada-Belgium'97 Web-pages for more information.

• In our series of technical presentations, an evening event was held on Wednesday, September 24, 1997, 19:30-22:00, at the Cimad Institute in Bornem. Speaker was Simon Johnston, who presented his recently published book "Ada 95 for C and C++ Programmers".

• A technical presentation "Ada 95 for Personal Computers: It's Real!" by Dr. Michael B. Feldman (U.S.A.) was held on Thursday, May 29, 1997, 18:00-21:00, at the Department of Computer Science of the U.L.B. in Brussels.

• The 1997 Ada-Belgium General Assembly was held on Wednesday, February 19, 1997, 19:00-19:30, at Trasys in Brussels, and was followed by a 2-hour technical presentation on "High-Integrity Programming for Safety-Critical Software" by Praxis (U.K.), a world leader on safety management and formal specification, and a demonstration of Praxis' family of products (SPARK).

• The 6th annual Ada-Belgium Seminar was held on November 22nd, 1996, at Eurocontrol in Brussels, and featured Tucker Taft of Intermetrics as invited speaker.

• The 1996 Ada-Belgium General Assembly was held on March 1st, 1996, 17:00, at the Department of Computer Science of the U.L.B. in Brussels.

• The 5th annual Ada-Belgium Seminar was held on December 18th, 1995, at the "Huis van Chièvres" in the "Groot Begijnhof" in Leuven and featured once more an Ada authority as invited speaker: Robert Dewar of the GNAT-team at New York University.

• The full-day AdaSAGE Tutorial was held on June 2nd, 1995, at the "Arenberg kasteel" of the K.U.Leuven in Heverlee.

• The 1995 Ada-Belgium Ada Exhibition was held on May 17th, 1995, at the "Faculty Club" in the "Groot Begijnhof" in Leuven.

• The 1994 Ada-Belgium Seminar was held on November 23rd, 1994, at the U.L.B. in Brussels and featured John Barnes as invited speaker.

• Information on events held in the period 1991-1994 has not been added here yet.
  

Other Ada-related events

• Ada-Belgium maintains a list of announcements, calls for papers, calls for participation, programs, etc., of events that may be of interest for the Ada community world-wide.

• Ada-Europe (the European federation of national Ada societies) maintains links to pages of its member societies where you can find information on their local events.

To the Ada-Belgium home page.

Last update: 2013/02/11.