Alan Adamson is SPECtacular

Another
SPECtacular award from the SPEC annual meeting: Alan
Adamson retired from IBM
where he had been their primary SPEC Representative, held a number of
different elective positions in SPEC, and earned deep respect and
trust from his colleagues. Coming from the IBM
Toronto Software Lab, Alan was a natural to lead SPEC’s Java
committee. Having put that very large committee in smooth running
order, Alan was elected secretary to the Power committee helping it
to produce the first industry standard power performance benchmark.
Meanwhile he led the OSG
steering committee which coordinates activities of all the SPEC OSG
committees.

Alan genuinely cares about the
well-being of SPEC and the people involved. He demonstrates
incredible thoughtfulness and effectiveness in thinking about SPEC’s
benchmark development. He fosters the fun and friendly SPEC culture
where there is always time to share a joke or a funny story if
appropriate. At the same time he creates space for candid discussions
of serious matter. Alan’s leadership and personal effort has been a
big contributor to the success of SPEC.

Alan continues to hold one position in
SPEC, as a director, because members of the board of directors are
elected as individuals, not as companies. Alan serves as a general
chair of the 2010 WOSP/SIPEWInternational Conference on Performance Engineering, a joint
conference of SPEC and ACM which
brings together top academic researchers and industry practitioners
in performance engineering.

You can follow Alan on his blog,
for interesting insights on art, technology, politics, and life –
where he is just as opinionated as ever, just as modest as ever, just
as intolerant of stupidity, and just as tolerant of the people
involved – even when we are opinionated, immodest, and stupid at
times. For all his hard work in SPEC I can think of nobody more
deserving of a relaxing retirement than Alan, and nobody whom we will
miss more than him!