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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