Dear Distributed Computing Community,
there have been 117 responses to the conference model survey. With this
turnout I believe that we get a solid picture of the community's current
stance. You can browse the results here:
https://forms.gle/7FuEJX6TmcUcHg6a9
I'll summarize what I believe to be the salient points.
1. A strong majority wants to move to multiple deadlines per year: 61.5%
voted for doing this with both PODC and DISC, and another 21.5% want to
at least try this out with one of the conferences. Only 10.3% are against.
Many comments pointed to other conferences that implemented this model
successfully. It should also be noted that - as comments highlighted -
having 3 deadlines is not a magic number; 4, having 4 between PODC and
DISC together, of even 12 are all valid options. I simply chose one
possibility to keep things tractable.
2. There is a less overwhelming, but still very clear majority in favor
of transitioning the conferences to being journals (58,1% for, one
quarter against).
*=> I suggest that the steering committees propose concrete ways of how
the above two points could be implemented.* If there are several viable
options, querying the community in the same way as done here might be a
good option.
From my point of view, it is worth asking whether we should still
consider PODC and DISC as separate conferences/journals after the
corresponding changes. I don't see any difference in terms of topics
between the two, and I don't see a substantial gap in quality within
recent years (if there is any). However, as the responses to the other
questions suggest, opinions are likely to be much more divided on this
issue and dependent on implementation.
3. There's no clear picture regarding colocation. 44.5% are against
colocating PODC and DISC, while 47% are in favor - and for many of these
the details matter.
4. There's some tendency to change how conference time is used (under
the assumption that the submission model is changed), but this was also
the point where most respondents didn't want any change or didn't
know/didn't care (about one quarter each). The only concrete change that
has clear support is having more keynote talks.
=> While there's substantial support in favor of deviating from the
current model on these points, there are also significant concerns, and
on both points the specific implementation matters a lot. This is also
reflected by diverse individual comments.
I propose to have a more detailed discussion within the community,
especially on colocation (where less than 10% didn't care!), once the
first two points have been decided on. This will narrow down the
solution space and enable consideration of more concrete options.
Best,
Christoph
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