After the success of Seillac I, IFIP WG 5.2 (CAD) organised a second workshop at Domaine de Seillac with the title: Methodology of Interaction. The Organising Committee had several members in common with Seillac I. Rather than wait until after the Workshop before deciding on publishing the findings, it was decided that the Workshop would have a much-enhanced Secretariat that would attempt to capture the content straight after the Workshop. David Duce from Rutherford Laboratory took responsibility for capturing the content of each plenary session. This was achieved by having two scribes and a tape recording of each session.
Three secretaries, Odette Caradec from Thomson-CSF (who had performed this function at Seillac I), Linda Brown from CWI and Bridget Astridge from the Rutherford Laboratory worked long hours throughout the Workshop. At the time, Rutherford had been evaluating the Hewlett-Packard HP2648A as a potential single user system. By persuading Hewlett-Packard, France to loan two of these terminals, it was possible to set up two workstations and printers that gave immediate transcripts of the sessions for checking and, more importantly, the ability to save all the files on small cassette tapes and transport these back to the UK after the Workshop for input to the Proceedings. The only minor hitch was at Charles De Gaulle Airport. The cassette tapes had been wrapped up as a long thin box which by the time it reached security had bent near one end so that it resembled a machine gun more than the workshop proceedings. Bob Hopgood and David Duce gave Bridget Astridge the job of attempting to persuade the local security man that these tapes should not go through the scanner ;-)
The aim was to have the results of the workshop ready for publication by September 1979 and this was achieved. The book was published by North-Holland in 1980.
