[TYPES] global debriefing over our virtual experience of conferences

[Gabriel Scherer]

I am in broad agreement with many of Flavien's points. I hope that we can
learn how to do virtual conferences well so that we can reduce our travel
footprint in the future, not just due to pandemic issues. In this respect I
have been fairly impressed with the degree of investment of many members of
our community in finding and building better tools for virtual conferences.
Thanks!

I hope that this major change (that is imposed to us for an unpredictable
amount of time) could also be an occasion to seriously consider
de-synchronizing publication of our work from conference presentations. I
think that journal publications have better academic review process, but
we've been traditionally tied to major conferences as publication venues.
Maybe it is time to change this? In this respect an interesting approach is
"The Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming" journal which is coupled
with the <Programming> conference: journal publishes four volumes a year
(trying to fit a three-months reviewing process), and the conference is
held annually, with all papers accepted during the year presented.
Forced-online venues could be an occasion to experiment with this. (We
could think of other formats, such as having a *seminar* attached to a
journal instead of a conference; so far I found it easier to enjoy online
seminars than online conferences.)


On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 2:47 PM Flavien Breuvart <
breuvart at lipn.univ-paris13.fr> wrote:

> [ The Types Forum, http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/types-list
> ]
>
> Dear colleagues,
>
> This spring, under unfortunate circumstances, many conferences held
> virtually. We have witnessed the disadvantages of such dispositives, but
> also its numerous advantages. Many of those conferences have had
> internal debates for debriefing this experiences, but I haven't seen any
> large and public debate inside the community. I was hopping that some of
> you may engage in such debates.
>
> As a starting point, I will try to succinctly expose my own point of
> view, which is probably subjective, politically charged, and highly
> debatable, but this is the whole point :-)
>
> I think we where all impressed by the high level of attendance of
> conferences and workshops. But when thinking back at it, this situation
> is perfectly normal as virtual conferences opened several blockades
> usually preventing people from coming, in particular via the absence of
> fees, the flexibility with respect to other duties (familial, teaching
> or administrative), or the weight of travels. Even if this was the only
> reason, I think it would be worth considering to secure part of these
> improvements.
>
> Another, huge (but politically charged) advantage, is the drastic
> reduction of the carbon footprint of our conferences. Several colleges
> are advocating for a public engagement of the community to reduce its
> global footprint. For example, see https://tcs4f.org/ which is a group
> advocating for a 50% carbon reduction in theoretical computer sciences.
> I have no doubt that other such initiative exist here and there; this
> year unfortunate event at least showed that they are well founded and
> not unreachable.
>
> That being said, I have to address the fact that our virtual conferences
> had technical issues and that physical ones have several other
> advantages. Concerning the technical issues (timeline clashes, internet
> connection, organization...), I strongly believe that time and
> experience can overcome most of them; I was helping in the organization
> comity of FSCD and it appear that many issues could have been avoided by
> a few technical adjustments (such as assigning two co-chairs for each
> sessions for example).
>
> Concerning the advantages of conferences, I see three important ones :
> 1) the chance encounters, 2) the strengthening of collaborations, and 3)
> the prolonged focus. 1) From my (short) experience, the first can happen
> in smaller scale meetings, that can be mostly local (with a minority of
> invited non-local visitors). 2) The best way to strengthen
> collaborations is not conferences but lab invitations (which could be
> more frequent without conferences fees and time expenditures). 3) I got
> the impression that most people where not as focus as in traditional
> conferences, but not to a big margin, and mainly by lack of routine
> (here I distinguish independent seminars and regular courses, as all
> teachers I have seen the disaster of virtualization among our students...).
>
> All in all, I would advocate for more small scale meetings, more lab
> invitations, but a virtualization of big scale conferences, and (why
> not), the securing of some international virtual seminar that where very
> interesting (thank you for the organizers that took those initiatives !).
>
> I hope I was not too long and too boring, do not hesitate to contradict
> me, all I want is to start a fruitful debate.
>
> Best,
>
> Flavien
>
>
>