Apparently they are still working on the homepage for the New England chapter of IASA, but at least the date and agenda for the initial meeting are set (register here).
The first meeting is set for June 17th from 5-8 pm at the Microsoft Office in Cambridge.
The topic is "Software Factories," which is one of my favorite subjects due to its relationship to domain specific languages.
The speakers are directly involved in developing and applying concepts researched and implemented within the Microsoft Factory initiative, which should provide a very interesting, "practitioner-oriented" view.
Many of you may be familiar with the sometimes heated back and forth discussions in the blogosphere over the years around the different approaches to the problem, whether MDA. MDA/UML, or what Microsoft is doing. This is one of those "holy grails" of software, which is to improve the level of abstraction at which we humans deal with computers, improve our productivity, and help reduce the overall labor costs of software development.
The meeting starts at 5 with a reception, followed by an introduction to IASA at 6. After that John Slaby of Raytheon and Jezz Santos of Microsoft will let us know what's going on with software factories.
I think it's great that we're starting a local chapter of the association of software architects, and hope to see you there!
Update 6/6, see Bob's blog for additional details.