A. Goldsworthy: I remember being elected in Tokyo as President-elect of IFIP in 1985 as one of the high points of my professional career. Kauro Ando, the outgoing President and I had been closely associated since 1975 in the organization of the joint Congress in1980 in Tokyo and Melbourne (the first joint congress in IFIP history), and it was an honour to succeed him. He was a true gentleman. Kind, polite and considerate. Mrs. Ando was a truly lovely lady with whom my wife Shirley had several delightful shopping trips in various cities around the world at IFIP events.

I was really looking forward to the three years as President, largely because it would give me the opportunity to work even more closely with some wonderful people. I had been fascinated by many of the "characters" when I attended my first General Assembly in Stockholm in 1974, as President of the Australian Computer Society, to put our bid for the 1980 Congress. I well remember Lehman, a large bear of a man, thundering a protest at his country being referred to by another delegate as "East Germany" (remember this was 1974). He reminded everyone in no uncertain terms it was the "German Democratic Republic" and everyone better remember that. For someone far removed from the subtleties of European politics it was a whole new world.

It takes years to really understand the workings of IFIP and being President is a challenge, but a rewarding one. We only came together once a year at the GA and I felt we could make better use of our time. We needed a lot more parallel processing. We spent too much time (three days) at the GA itself with everybody in attendance in non-productive reporting. The GA was seen to be the supreme forum and everybody wanted to discuss everything at the GA. We were not optimizing the opportunity of using the tremendous amount of experience and wisdom that sat around the table. We did not have a suitable forum to focus on the long-term strategic growth and development of IFIP. The subsidiary meetings were treated as routine.

I decided we needed to create a forum that was seen as important as the GA in which technical and strategic issues could be discussed in depth, and we would focus on organizational, administrative and governance issues at the GA. And so after much discussion, at the GA in Delhi in 1988, the Technical Assembly was created. This led to consequential changes in several of the other committees and was undoubtedly one of the most significant organizational change to IFIP since its inception. I appointed Blagovest Sendov, who was to be my successor as President, as the first Chairman of the TA. Other significant developments during my term were the creation of two new Technical Committees, TC12 Artificial Intelligence and TC 13 Human Computer Interaction. These were the first new TC’s created for six years. SG 14 Foundations of Computer Science (which would become TC 1 in 1996) was also established in 1989.

A. Goldsworthy: After spending so long involved in IFIP it is hard not to remain interested. After all I have attended every GA (except one) since Stockholm in 1974, and I hope to attend Montreal. I also attended most Council meetings during those years, served as a Vice-President for nine years, and have the unique honour of having chaired the Organising Committees for two Congresses (1980 and 1996). Over a period of 28 years it is the people who keep you interested, not just the organization. IFIP does not hold as much interest for me now as it did when I was actively involved and that is to be expected. But the increasing specialization in the informatics field has also diminished the broader interests that IFIP used to have and people now tend to have narrower interests than years ago. This leads to technical isolation, but this is a natural progression in any developing field. For this reason also Congresses are no longer as stimulating for me as they were in years gone by.

A. Goldsworthy: The TC’s and WG’s remain the engine room of IFIP and it is important that they be very proactive in identifying new and emerging areas. In the past IFIP has tended to be a little slow and conservative in taking the lead. We have yet to solve the vexing problem of how to get industry involved in IFIP activities. We need to broaden the interests of our TC’s which over the years have been very technically focused. I well remember when TC9 was established in 1976, Dorodnicyn referring to it as Talking Committee 9, because he felt it was outside the scope of what IFIP should be about and could achieve little. But it is these application related areas, such as the internet, e-commerce, infotainment, telemedicine, and so on which warrant IFIP attention.

A. Goldsworthy: I left Bond University in 1997, Australia’s first private university, after seven years as Dean of School of Business and re-entered business. I still live in Brisbane, but have an office in Melbourne (a two hour flight), and go there a couple of days each week. I am currently Chairman of several companies; one is Australia’s largest provider of on-line property data, another is the subsidiary of an Indian software company, one a human resources company, one a foundation to nurture inventors, a Centre for International Research on Communication and Information Technologies (CIRCIT) at RMIT University, and a Digital Media Institute at Melbourne University. I am also a member of the Government’s Industry Research and Development Board, the Australian Fulbright Commission, and Executive Director of the Business/Higher Education Round Table, an organization of which I was a founder in 1990, which comprises the Vice-Chancellors (Presidents) of Australia’s universities, business leaders, and the CEO’s of the major research organizations, and its purpose is to build stronger linkages between business, research and higher education. I also teach leadership at Griffith University. Whenever we can my wife and I spend time in the bay on our cabin cruiser, generally with some of our eight wonderful grandchildren.

IFIP will always remain in my memory as a series of very pleasant and enjoyable activities with a kaleidoscope of wonderful people.