Perhaps not all readers know that the official language of IFORS are both the English and the French. At the time such a decision recognized the specificity and peculiarity of the French OR school which contributed some of the more important and original results of our discipline (just consider Berge contribution in graph theory or Allais contribution in decision theory).

Another peculiarity of France was also the non existence of a national OR society. The OR community participated in the AFCET (born as a "cybernetics" society) which included the broader computer science community beside automatic control, cognitive science etc.. For different reasons AFCET does not exist any more and just to be once again peculiar the French OR researchers decided to establish their first national society last January during the first national OR conference (by the way a success!).

The new society is named ROADEF (Société Française de Recherche Opérationnelle et d'Aide à la Décision). I have the honour of being the first president of this society. The members of the first board elected in January are relatively young: the ages varies from 30 to 50 with an average of 38. It seems to be an appreciable advantage especially after reading in AIRO news the article written by Costas Pappis, president of the Hellenic OR Society, who remarks that it is difficult to "involve new and active members, particularly among younger OR generations". By the way, (just to be different once again) a particularity of this board is the following: it is composed of only three French and completed by a Belgian, a Greek who lives partly in Italy and an American. I hope this may reinforce the relations with other national OR societies. At the beginning of a new society, there are always a lot of things to do, but we have enough enthusiasm and many ideas and proposals. I will try however, to contribute some ideasfollowing the discussion initiated by M. Pirlot on this bulletin, although we are still in the very beginning phase.

A first point concerns the national journals. At the time of AFCET we had our national journal "RAIRO Operations Research" which I hope received and published papers of international level, although a large part of them in French, but the other ones in English. One of our struggles was to convince the French committees in the Universities and Research Centers that a paper in French in the RAIRO was as good as a paper in English in a national journal of a country in which English is the mother language! It is a great pity for the other languages, but I think that to be read by a great part of our scientific community it is a necessity to publish in English. On the other hand the possibility of publishing in their mother language may help the young researchers to write more papers. Unfortunately, the future of RAIRO is not yet clear since it was a property of AFCET (who bankrupted). Nevertheless I believe that perhaps it is time to think seriously about a common journal with other European societies. Very soo we will come up with a more precise project.

A second point concerns our relation with the business community. I think that it is probably easier to a national society, than to EURO, to keep interesting relations with the industrial world. We are nearer the enterprises, we speak the same language, we know the national laws and we also know the crafts and skills of the different laboratories of the country. So, we may: create new links for national, European or international RD projects and collaborations, help in finding student placements or job propositions, propose tutorials and training for industrial participants. Once again I think that a collaboration with our near national OR societies could meet the increasing economic collaboration of the European industry.

A third point concerns our national meetings. Actually there are many possibilities and the members of the ROADEF have different opinions. It is sure that we need short specialized workshops on particular themes around the last improvement of a the domain or about very efficient methods developed for industrial applications. The speakers in such workshops may present only working papers. We need also more general meetings which may cover the different subjects of OR. It is sure that these general meetings or conferences must contain tutorials of the best level made by invited seniors. What is a source of conflicts is the selection mode for the parallel sessions: selection on short abstracts, on extended abstracts, very strict selection, relatively large selection ... Personally, I prefer a relatively strict selection on extended abstracts. For two reasons: first, it is easier to eliminate uninteresting presentations; second, it is better for the young researchers who are accepted to know that the selection s seriously made. Once again very soon we will come up with a precise project since it could be possible to find good compromises widening our collaborations on a scientific and geographic level.

Finally I think that the existence of national OR societies within Europe is a good think. It is necessary to establish and realize bilateral and multilateral collaborations among our national societies. The role of EURO and IFORS being to facilitate and improve the global communication among the members of the whole OR community. Just to be once again different we rest optimist!
 

Prof. Marie-Claude Portmann
LORIA UMR 7503,
Bâtiment LORIA,
BP 239,
F - 54506 Vandoeuvre-les Nancy  Cedex  (France)
Tel: +33 3 83 58 41 85
Fax: +33 3 83 41 30 79
portmann@loria.fr
 
This article has been published in the AIROnews  n°1/98, and is part of an AIRO initiative taken after the meeting of national ORS Presidents during the EURO Conference in Barcelona, July 1997.