ALU - The Association of Lisp Users

Quoting their home page (http://www.lisp.org/alu/home):
	 :	''The Association of Lisp Users is an international organization dedicated to promoting and representing the international Lisp communities. The ALU maintains this website and holds annual international Lisp conferences in major cities around the world. The ALU is a fully incorporated not-for-profit organization.''

The ALU maintains a CommonLispWiki. See AluWiki.

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The ALU's stated purpose is to promote the use of Lisp. ("Lisp" is defined broadly.) ALU officials say that it primarily does so through conventions, though it is also interested in tactics like certification.

Currently, there are monthly meetings via conference call. A redacted version of the minutes is available to the 18 "extended board" members, with sensitive corporate information (from Franz, Corman, etc.) removed.

It is not fully clear what the defacto difference between the inner and extended board is, aside from the redacted minutes.

The current difficulty of organizing conferences is that it costs approximately $40k. Entrance fees apparently cover the costs; however, there is an element of risk since various costs must be paid in advance. For the 2003 convention, a large component of the advance costs was paid from personal funds. Other potential funding sources include public membership fees and corporate sponsorship.

Currently, there seem to be no members outside its inner and extended Boards.

''The ALU have in the past defined their members as 'anyone who's been to an ILC or LUGM'.  More recently they introduced options for paid membership: I don't know what the takeup has been on this, except that the number of paid members is greater than zero'' -- DanBarlow

In 1997, the ALU was used as part of a profit grab, when it organized a U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee meeting. In addition, one person apparently convinced the government to commit $200K to the next ALU conference, with Al Gore as the keynote speaker. The deal at some point fell through.
* http://openmap.bbn.com/hypermail/clim/0226.html
* http://openmap.bbn.com/hypermail/clim/0227.html

Currently, the ALU emphasizes that Lisp users should not publicly speculate about the ALU. Instead, they should email the ALU Board directly with either questions or attractive proposals. Presumably this is similar to the logic that people not "speculate" about Lisp, but rather speak to Lisp users for actual knowledge. However, one difference is that there are public forums where Lisp users hang out and speak freely. On the other hand, it should foster sensitivity for people who correctly realize that Lisp users are quite likely to provide a highly biased presentation of facts.


See: http://alu.cliki.net/ALU%20Formation%20Press%20Release

Also see LispLanguage, CommonLisp.
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CategoryLisp