ICOA Announces Changes and Goals

INDUSTRY COUNCIL OPEN AMIGA ANNOUNCEMENT

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - Midwest Amiga Exposition, October 1998

By the ICOA steering committee

Kermit Woodall - Commercial seat
Wolf Dietrich - Commercial seat
Olaf Barthel - Individual seat
Petter Nilsen - Open seat
Harv Laser - User representative
Fleecy Moss - Amiga, Inc. representative

ICOA Announces Changes and Goals

The ICOA (Industry Council Open Amiga) steering committee has chosen to refocus the ICOA. While the ICOA has always been about developers serving developers, a clear and understandable focus was needed. The ICOA steering committee has decided on a course that will reorganize itself into a professional society. Much like a user group serves its members, the ICOA will now focus on communications, resources, and issues relevant to developers.

Towards this the first step of many will be to establish the permanent ICOA web site. The current site was designed as an intermediate step during a process of creating the ICOA and hosting elections. The new site will be a resource to all developers, whether they choose to join ICOA or not. The web site will feature information specific to the ICOA such as its mailing lists, software and hardware development information and FAQs, production and marketing information, and other news and information that touches on all aspects of developing and publishing a product for the Amiga platform. A special feature in the works is an piracy reporting mechanism that maintains anonymity.

The web site is located at http://www.amiga.net and will be initially active in the first weeks of October 1998. The site is designed to grow and is being built under the direction of the steering committee with the active work of Ted Wallingford and Gary Peake.

Future plans for the ICOA will depend highly on developer support. Regular developer classes and seminars are already being hosted at nearly all Amiga shows under the coordination of Steve Shireman and Kermit Woodall for the ICOA. Coordination of these seminars will become a regular offering of the ICOA to Amiga trade shows that have the space and desire to host them.

Pending Amiga, Inc. participation, the ICOA plans to release a quarterly newsletter and CDROM. The focus of the newsletter will be more than technical issues, it will include issues relating to running a business, producing artwork and advertising for a product and more. The CDROM will include a wide variety of contents that should include everything from code collections to catalogs of advertising and promotional products to help companies grow.

Like a user group, members of the ICOA will get out of it what they put into it. Phrased in computer terms this will mean, 'garbage in = garbage out'. Right now with what's going into the web site and what we've seen of the ICOA seminars, we can say we're getting caviar - let's keep that direction as we move forward!

The ICOA is a professional society by and for developers. For more information see http://www.amiga.net


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