[TYPES/announce] Final Announcement - Panel Debate, Tomorrow @ 3pm UTC: "Evolution or Revolution? The Future of Conferences in Theoretical Computer Science"

[Jamie Vicary]

A reminder of the community debate tomorrow (Wednesday) at 3pm UTC.
Everybody is welcome to join at zoom.us/j/177472153.

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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 discuss the strengths and weaknesses of our
current system in a time of climate change, COVID and other stresses,
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 reviewing 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
tight relationships, and need to be discussed together to gain a full
understanding of the issues involved.

OUR PANEL

To discuss these issues, we have an excellent panel with a wide range
of 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.

  - Dr Nicole Immorlica (www.immorlica.com) is a Senior Principal
Researcher at Microsoft Research, and has recently co-founded the
Virtual Chair conferencing system (www.virtualchair.net).

  - 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 Thomas Schwentick, TU Dordmund
(https://ls1-www.cs.tu-dortmund.de/de/kontakt-thomas-schwentick) is
the President of the European Association for Computer Science Logic.
He was a co-creator of the tcs4f.org online pledge, and is currently
setting up a new open-access TCS journal.

  - 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.

WHEN AND WHERE

The debate will take place tomorrow (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 -- 11pm Shanghai -- midnight Tokyo -- 1am Sydney

The event will take place on Zoom at the following address. No
password or registration is required.

  - zoom.us/j/177472153

WEBPAGE

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

  - Antoine Amarilli, Thomas Colcombet, Hugo Férée and Thomas
Schwentick (2020), "Pledge for Sustainable Research in Theoretical
Computer Science", https://tcs4f.org/
  - Boaz Barak (2016), "Computer Science should Stay Young",
https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2016/6/202644-computer-science-should-stay-young/fulltext
  - 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/fulltext
  - Benjamin Pierce (2020), "Conferences in an Era of Expensive
Carbon", https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2020/3/243024-conferences-in-an-era-of-expensive-carbon/fulltext
  - Moshe Vardi (2020), "Publish and Perish",
https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2020/1/241717-publish-and-perish/fulltext

We hope you will join us for what promises to be a memorable and
exciting event. Please forward this message to your research group,
and others who may be interested to participate.

Best wishes,
Jamie