puder@burdvax.UUCP (Karl Puder) (08/01/83)
After being patient all this time, I finally received my copy of the proceedings of last Winter's UNICOM in today's mail. If you have also been wondering when it would arrive, the answer is now "soon, grasshopper". I don't have time to review it now, but it is 350 pages long, and has a permuted index of titles and an author index in the back. Karl Puder burdvax!puder SDC-aBC, R & D Paoli, Pa. (215)648-7555
mp@mit-eddie.UUCP (Mark Plotnick) (08/03/83)
Rather than making us all wait breathlessly for another 7 months for a copy of last month's proceedings, perhaps some people who were there can write some medium-length summaries of the various talks and post them to either this newsgroup or a more appropriate one (whatever happened to net.unix and net.usoft?). Mark
geo@watarts.UUCP (08/07/83)
The previous message implied that it would take on the order of 7 months for the proceedings to be put together and mailed out. Has it really taken that long in the past? How about the list of participants? There was a note in the conference kit, saying that because of the number of late registrants, the list of conference participants was not included as part of the conference kit, but would be available at the conference. There was an announcement on Friday, that the list of participants would not be available at the conference, but would instead be mailed out to everyone. Has anyone received one yet? Is anyone unhappy with Rogal, the professional conference organizers? Cordially, Geo Swan, Integrated Studies, University of Waterloo (allegra||ihnp4)!watmath!watarts!geo
thomas@utah-gr.UUCP (Spencer W. Thomas) (08/08/83)
Speaking of proceedings, I'm involved in the planning for the June 1984
Salt Lake City conference (don't flame to me about Utah in June, we were
originally scheduled for January, but thats a whole different story).
In any case, we are considering requiring speakers to presubmit their
"papers" probably a month before the conference, so we can publish a
proceedings AT THE CONFERENCE. You would get it with your registration
packet.
We feel that Usenix has grown enough that it is time to get a little
more "professional" about the conferences. We're not asking for a final
draft 8 months ahead like SIGGRAPH, just 1 month so we can get the
proceedings out by conference time. Wouldn't you like to have a little
more information about a talk than the title before going to it? Of
course, if someone gets some tremendous new result between the time they
send their paper in and the conference, they would be welcome to present
it in their talk, it just wouldn't make it into the proceedings. I think
this would balance out having to wait 6 or 7 months to get them at all,
though.
Perhaps we will have two classes of talks - those which are prepared and
make it into the proceedings, and more "impromptu" (but still scheduled
ahead) ones which don't.
I would like to hear what you have to say about this possibility. Does
anybody violently oppose having to have their talk planned out a month
ahead? What about something like a "poster session", where you put up
your results onto a couple of pieces of posterboard, and everybody
wanders around looking at them? Send us your input, or discuss it on
the net.
Spencer Thomas
(The opinions expressed above are mine, but are pretty much shared here.)
Mail to: usenix84@utah-cs, {harpo,arizona,sask,hplabs}!utah-cs!usenix84eric@aplvax.UUCP (08/08/83)
I think it is probably time for Unicom to require papers in advance. I suspect that only 1 month is not enough time (particularly when you will have to threaten some presenters with bodily harm to get the paper out of them). But I have been involved in papers and presentations to several different conferences, and Unicom was the only one that did not require papers in advance, and did not distribute proceedings at the conference. Imagine how nice it would have been to open the proceedings and learn the talk you thought would be useful for your system management was really on financial accounting, ot systems accounting. The flip side of this coin, however, means the session leaders must get information (acceptance, rejection, comments) back much earlier to the speakers. We did not learn that our paper to the July Unicom was accepted until the beginning of June, and then only because we called to find out. The copyright forms did not arrive until only a couple of weeks before the conference. I don't know about other sites, but our travel and legal departments both take longer than that to function. It is apparent that Unicom is now a major conference. I think it is time that all involved recognize this, and start taking lessons from the other conferences to make everything run more smoothly. The days of only a hundred gurus is over, for better or for worse. Eric Bergan ...!seismo!umcp-cs!aplvax!eric
silver@csu-cs.UUCP (08/15/83)
In response to the question, no, Rogal did not do very well by us either. They messed up room reservations and prepayment. Hindsight is wonderful. I learned that often you save nothing using "the agency" and are better off going directly to the airline/hotel/car rental/whatever yourself, and securing the reservation on the phone with a credit card if need be. Alan Silverstein, Hewlett-Packard Fort Collins Systems Division, Colorado ucbvax!hplabs!hpfcla!ajs, 303-226-3800 x3053, N 40 31'31" W 105 00'43"