henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (06/22/83)
I don't like parallel sessions either, but the other big gripe people had about the San Diego conference was that the presentations were too rushed and often the Q+A period had to be cut short. The Program Committee sort of had three choices: 1. Go for parallel sessions. 2. Force most of the talks to be really short. 3. Reject a lot of decent papers. Clearly one doesn't really want to do any of these things, but that would have meant at least a four-day conference. (The overall schedule, i.e. three days of conference, was outside the Program Committee's control.) There just really isn't any good compromise. The plan I like, personally, is the one that was used for at least one of the very early Usenix meetings: evening sessions too. The result was that one did very little except eat, sleep, and attend, but it did give more time for the material (or for hanging around in the corridors gossiping, depending on your preference). But I doubt that this is politically palatable now that the conferences have gone beyond being informal gatherings of the wizards. Other problems like the cost of accommodations arise from the same cause: the conferences are too big for informal organizers anymore. Few colleges have dorms that can hold 2000+ people. Certainly U of T doesn't. Henry Spencer U of Toronto