In December I shall be presenting in Barcelona the work I have been doing on early specification, using two different styles of support: the first based on a "distributed" style of design and the second requiring a more "coordinated" form of lifecycle. In the main part of my talk I shall explain what these are; how they relate to each-other; what they appear to be good for; and where they fall down. In the later part of my talk I hope to incite some general discussion on the related topic of what it takes to get a PhD in this sort of area, which combines aspects of logic, computaiton and engineering.