[DMANET] Panel Debate, Wednesday 2 September @ 3pm UTC: "Evolution or Revolution? The Future of Conferences in Theoretical Computer Science"

The following message is from the steering Committee of the OWLS seminar.


Dear all,

The entire community is invited to participate in a debate on the
future of the conference system in theoretical computer science.
Organized as a special event as part of the Online Worldwide Seminar
on Logic and Semantics (OWLS), this will provide a rare community-wide
opportunity for us to consider the strengths and weaknesses of our
current system, and consider if we can do better.

The scope of the debate is all aspects of our publishing and community
traditions, characterised by prestige earned mostly through
publication in competitive conferences, and frequent local and
international travel. Possible topics for discussion include the need
to publish in conferences for career progression, which usually
involves burning carbon; wasted author and reviewer effort when good
papers are rejected from highly competitive conferences; the extent of
our responsibility as a community to respond to climate change;
alternative publishing models, like the journal-focussed system used
in mathematics; high costs of conference travel and registration;
virtual conference advantages, disadvantages and best practice;
improving equality, diversity and access; consequences and response to
COVID-19; and the role of professional bodies. These topics have many
close relationships, and need to be discussed together to gain a full
understanding of the issues involved, and how we can move forward.

OUR PANEL

To discuss these issues, we have an excellent panel with a wide range
of relevant experience:

- Dr Brendan Fong, MIT (brendanfong.com) is a postdoctoral
researcher with considerable experience organizing virtual conferences
and seminars (act2020.mit.edu), and an Executive Editor of the new
open-access journal Compositionality.

- Professor Delia Kesner, University of Paris (irif.fr/~kesner) has
served on the Steering Committee of six conferences and workshops, and
is currently the SC Chair of FSCD, the most recent iteration of which
was organized at short notice as a virtual event (fscd2020.org).

- Professor Benjamin Pierce, University of Pennsylvania
(cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce) has served as PC chair of a range of events
including POPL and ICFP, and has written powerfully on the need for
the computer science community to adapt to the reality of climate
change.

- Professor Moshe Vardi, Rice University (cs.rice.edu/~vardi) is
Senior Editor of the journal Communications of the ACM, and founded
the Federated Logic Conference (FLOC). He has long been a vocal
commentator on structural problems with computer science publishing.

PROPOSE A QUESTION

Questions will be asked by members of the community. That means you!
Please reply to this email to propose your question, which could raise
any issue in scope. **Why not do it right now?** Make sure to use an
academic email address. We'll let you know if your question is
accepted, and you'll then have the opportunity to ask it during the
debate, and to respond to the panel's comments.

WHEN AND WHERE

The debate will take place on Wednesday 2 September at 3pm UTC, which
corresponds to the following times in a range of cities around the
world:

8am San Francisco / 10am Houston / 11am Philadelphia / 4pm London /
5pm Paris / 9pm Mumbai / 11pm Beijing / midnight Tokyo / 1am Sydney

The event will take place on Zoom at the following address, with no
password or registration required:

- zoom.us/j/177472153

The debate will be followed by an opportunity to discuss informally
with other members of the community in small groups.

WEBPAGE

This event is organized as part of the OWLS seminar series. For more
information, a calendar you can embed into your own, and to sign up
for reminder emails, visit the webpage:

- https://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~vicaryjo/owls/

READING

Members of the community may enjoy the following articles, related to
the topic of the debate.

- Lance Fortnow (2009), "Time for Computer Science to Grow Up",
https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2009/8/34492-viewpoint-time-for-computer-science-to-grow-up
- Benjamin Pierce, Michael Hicks, Crista Lopes and Jens Palsberg
(2020), "Conferences in an Era of Expensive Carbon",
https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2020/3/243024-conferences-in-an-era-of-expensive-carbon
- Moshe Vardi (2020), "Publish and Perish",
https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2020/1/241717-publish-and-perish

We hope you will join us for the debate. Please forward this message
to members of your research group, and others who may be interested to
participate.

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