[TYPES] global debriefing over our virtual experience of conferences

[Buday Gergely István]

  Related to this, I quote from my unpublished manuscript:

This year the conferences are mostly held online. In the computer  
science research community we should discuss the

  question whether organizers should relax the requirement of physically

  attending conferences if you wanted to publish. The business model  
of journals

  is a heated debate, so could be the conferences. Why build a paywall for

  publications that does not go to reviewers but to the hotel,  
catering and travel industry?

  In poor regions going to expensive conferences is a problem.

  The drawbacks of online conferences are obvious, but the advantages  
are also. Why

  attend a conference if you are interested only in a section and you  
can follow

  it through online broadcast?

   

  Interestingly, even before we thought anything about a possible  
pandemic, there

  were voices of not holding that many conferences, due to the concern of the

  ecologic footprint of long-distance flights \cite{Vardi-Publish-and-Perish}.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3373386

A response on twitter says

   

  \begin{quote}It's a noble goal to reduce the CO${}_2$ footprint.  
However, if you made physical attendance optional, neither  
universities nor companies would support conference participation. A  
decrease in physical attendance would also likely make conferences  
financially infeasible. \cite{Leidner-declining-conferences}

  \end{quote}

   

  I disagree here: conferences might morph into something we haven't seen yet,

  new business models can arise but the need for scientific discussion and

  publications will keep them alive. Online conferences let isolated

  researchers to participate and possibly joining distributed research groups.

   

  An interesting outcome would be the merge of journals and  
conferences, as it is

  exemplified by the Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages, which

  published papers from premier conferences like the Principles of Programming

  Languages (POPL).

   

  A conference held online this year, Logic in Computer Science already

  changed how we do a conference: participants are expected to watch

  presentations recorded in advance, letting more time to discuss research at

  videoconference time.

   

  A reviewer raised my attention about the drawbacks of moving  
conferences online:

  it is more difficult to build new friendships online, it is harder  
to get ideas from

  hallway discussions, no matter there are hallway Zoom channels for  
us. Another

  viewpoint is that funding organizations would spend less on  
conferences and so

  scientic life would be less human and more mechanized, as other  
parts of our life.

  Less discovering the world, less reward for spending much time in  
front of your laptop.

  That reviewer finds this effect on our culture risky.

  ---

- Gergely

Idézet (Jon Sterling <jon at jonmsterling.com>):

> [ The Types Forum, http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/types-list ]
>
> I want to put in my agreement with Talia's second point that we  
> should move to a model in which deadlines are frequent and cheap to  
> miss (as is the case in every discipline that is lucky enough to be  
> based on journals) --- I would add that if we can move toward such a  
> system, it would probably be unnecessary to argue for the deadline  
> extensions that have such a detrimental effect on the work-life  
> balance of scientists (pace Talia's first point, which is well taken).
>
> I've missed submitting to POPL several times because the deadlines  
> didn't line up with the stage of my research, but I am dreaming of a  
> future where it really matters less for me that my research happens  
> to be "medium rare" on approximately July 1st each year.
>
> I also support and agree with everything that Gabriel has said in  
> this thread. I truly love workshops and seminars, and if I could  
> flush all these expensive and stressful conferences directly down  
> the toilet (together with the dogmatic ideology of our professional  
> organizations and their representatives, which we consume en gavage)  
> and instead just go to lovely low-stress workshops and send my work  
> periodically to journals, I would be so happy.
>
> Best,
> Jon
>
> On Sun, Aug 23, 2020, at 11:11 AM, Talia Ringer wrote:
>> [ The Types Forum, http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/types-list ]
>>
>> I used to argue against changing conference deadline systems a lot, but the
>> pandemic response and political events in the US have made it clear to me
>> that this is a diversity issue. When a deadline is only once per year (and
>> some of us do not have work that easily crosses over to other major
>> conferences), missing it can be a major setback. And events like the
>> pandemic have a disproportionate impact on groups that are traditionally
>> underrepresented in our field. So the consequences of the deadline system
>> are very uneven and reinforce our field's current demographic.
>>
>> I agree that it is absolutely prudent to take this opportunity to reflect
>> on our review process. I want to push strongly for moving to a model in
>> which deadlines exist but are much more frequent (say, monthly or
>> quarterly). I think the approach Gabriel Scherer mentioned that is taken by
>> "The Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming" would be better both for
>> science and for diversity in our field.
>>
>> Talia
>> https://dependenttyp.es/
>>
>> On Sun, Aug 23, 2020 at 7:07 AM Gabriel Scherer <gabriel.scherer at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> [ The Types Forum, http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/types-list
>> ]
>>
>> 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
>>>
>>>
>>>
>
>