On the road to Bandol

The 2007 Isabelle Attali award has just been awarded, and this year is again a dual award: one for hard research, and one for more applied research. On the applied side, Mesure has won (i.e., the CNAM partners, Pierre Paradinas, Samia Bouzefrane, and Julien Cordry). But still, as a partner of the project, I feel honored by this, and this award makes me very happy, for at least three reasons:

1. Testing can be considered innovative. Testing is often considered as boring, not really related to research or development. The role of testers is often not recognized; testing tasks are often cut when a project becomes late, etc. For all these reasons, the mere fact that a testing project can get an innovation award is goof news for testers.
2. Opening doors can be rewarded. The objective of Mesure is to define a way to evaluate fairly the level of performance of a smart card, allowing customers to compare cards with simple criteria. This is new in the smart card indsutry, where comparison is more often based on hype than on facts. I strongly believe that opening these doors will generate a few difficulties, but that in the long run, a little transparency will help the industry.
3. This award encourages the building of a community. The Mesure partners have always wanted to make the results of the project as an open source project. This not only means that everybody will be able to access the tests and run them, but also that anybody conjoin the community and contribute to the project. I hope that this will actually happen, and that we will be able to build a strong community that goes beyond Mesure and covers Java Card as a whole.

Congratulations to Pierre, Samia, and Julien. And see you soon for more adventures.

UPDATED (05/12/07): Added link to the Mesure Web site