gregb@dowjone.UUCP (Gregory S. Baber) (07/03/89)
Hello, the Baltimore Usenix was my first. I stayed Monday through Wednesday. I attended tutorials on Monday and Tuesday, which were, for the most part, professionally run. I was, however, somewhat disappointed with the quality of the paper presentations given on Wednesday. Maybe I caught a bad day, and I realize that the speakers had a very short time to present, but I though that most of the speakers were fair at best. The overhead slides were generally unreadable (I sat about halfway back) and only a couple of the speakers had identifiable conclusion sections where they summarized the results of the work they had been doing. I've had to give a number of technical presentations at work, as well as conduct many week-long training classes, so I have a fairly good idea of how to put a technical presentation together. Again, I didn't stay for the full week, and this was my first conference, but is this fairly typical of the paper presentations? If so, I might be tempted to skip the presentations altogether and just read the proceedings. Sorry to be picky, but I expected better. Thanks, gregb -- Reply to: Gregory S. Baber Voice: (609) 520-5077 Dow Jones & Co., Inc. UUCP: ..princeton!dowjone!gregb Box 300 or ..uunet!dowjone!gregb Princeton, N.J. 08543-0300 "So long, and thanks for all the fish"
brian@ucsd.EDU (Brian Kantor) (07/04/89)
I remarked earlier this year that perhaps the Usenix conferences were being held too often; the evidence at the time was the list of papers to be presented at the Baltimore conference. I believe that it simply takes more than a few months to research and write a quality paper, and if the conferences are held too often then the supply of good papers will be drained too soon leaving few good ones for subsequent conferences. The San Diego conference people remarked that they'd have liked to have had two paper tracks running at the conference but that they didn't get enough good ones to do that. Others have remarked that the San Diego conference probably drained off the good papers for at least a year. (The San Diego conference wasn't unique in this; I'm just using it as an example because I live here.) To worsen the situation, there are also special-interest symposia and mini-conferences held throughout the year. Twice-yearly Usenix conferences are traditional; I don't seriously imagine that will be changed soon. However, we might be able to find some way of ensuring more worthwhile technical sessions and more good papers. One suggestion is to have more panel discussions; I've usually found them to be more lively and they are often more informative than someone just presenting research results. Another might be to have sessions of repeat papers, where papers selected from those presented at Usenix-sponsored symposia and mini-conferences would be presented again to the wider audience of the general conference. Or perhaps there should be a series of half-day tutorials presented throughout the week. Waddayouthink? - Brian
smb@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com (Steven M. Bellovin) (07/05/89)
In article <444@warlock.UUCP>, gregb@dowjone.UUCP (Gregory S. Baber) writes: > I was, however, somewhat disappointed with the quality > of the paper presentations given on Wednesday. The Program Committee -- of which I was a member -- was disappointed in the quality of papers submitted. The subject was raised at the open Board meeting at Usenix; no consensus on what to do about it was reached. Remember one thing -- we can't schedule papers that aren't submitted. If people want more good papers, they should start submitting them. > Maybe I caught a bad day, and I realize that the speakers had a very short > time to present, but I though that most of the speakers were fair at best. Giving a good talk is also a skill -- and the papers were selected for their technical content, not for the speaker's ability. Too many technical people don't appreciate that, and have never studied it, or even tried to rehearse their talks. > The overhead slides were generally unreadable (I sat about halfway back) Often, authors don't follow the guidelines they're sent on point size, etc. This time, the situation was exacerbated because most people used the overhead projector, rather than more-legible 35mm slides. And in the Baltimore auditorium, only the main, direct-projection screen was used. At many other recent Usenix conferences, there were video screens around the room with the slides shown on them; that helped a lot. While I'm at it, let me throw in a plug for art departments. Most large companies have them, and speakers from such companies should take advantage of their services to get some *good* slides made. Remember -- these folks are just as much professionals at their jobs as you are at yours. I realize that some people don't have access to such facilities, or can't afford it if they do. But there were many folks who could have but didn't. > and only a couple of the speakers had identifiable conclusion sections where > they summarized the results of the work they had been doing. I've had to > give a number of technical presentations at work, as well as conduct many > week-long training classes, so I have a fairly good idea of how to put > a technical presentation together. Right. You have experience giving talks; most folks don't. There is a complementary tutorial at Usenix on presentations; too few people have taken it, I'd say. --Steve Bellovin
kpv@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com (Phong Vo[drew]) (07/06/89)
-In article <1815@ucsd.EDU>, brian@ucsd.EDU (Brian Kantor) writes: -The San Diego conference people remarked that they'd have liked to have -had two paper tracks running at the conference but that they didn't get -enough good ones to do that. Others have remarked that the San Diego -conference probably drained off the good papers for at least a year. -From smb Wed Jul 5 11:02:08 1989 -Message-ID: <11753@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com> ->In article <444@warlock.UUCP>, gregb@dowjone.UUCP (Gregory S. Baber) writes: -> I was, however, somewhat disappointed with the quality -> of the paper presentations given on Wednesday. - -The Program Committee -- of which I was a member -- was disappointed in -the quality of papers submitted. The subject was raised at the open -Board meeting at Usenix; no consensus on what to do about it was reached. -Remember one thing -- we can't schedule papers that aren't submitted. -If people want more good papers, they should start submitting them. A reasonable approach that could have been taken for the Baltimore conference was to re-invite some of the papers rejected in the San Diego conference because of lack of space or because they did not meet the themes of the time. Come to think of it, it's probably not a bad idea to keep a list of submitted papers that were considered good quality but not meeting some criteria specific to a particular conference. In future conferences, these papers may well be suitable. The problem is that many authors' egos are sufficiently frayed by a rejection not to submit them again. Phong Vo, att!ulysses!kpv
rcd@ico.ISC.COM (Dick Dunn) (07/06/89)
In article <1815@ucsd.EDU>, brian@ucsd.EDU (Brian Kantor) writes: > I remarked earlier this year that perhaps the Usenix conferences were > being held too often; the evidence at the time was the list of papers to > be presented at the Baltimore conference... There's a good case for that. There are other reasons that people want two conferences a year, of course. But I think Baltimore had particularly bad luck because of two timing-related phenomena. First, the Baltimore CFP asked for full papers by the submission deadline; I believe that San Diego had allowed for extended abstracts and I know that the upcoming DC needs only abstracts. This considerably tightens an author's deadline--it might shift the date you can get something done by 4-6 weeks. Second, the conferences don't split the year evenly--it's more like a 5-7 month split. This gives less time after USENIX[n-1] to get ready for USENIX[n]. Combine these two and you'd expect that Baltimore might have at most 2/3 of the submissions of a winter conference. The submission deadline for Baltimore was only a few days after San Diego--it left essentially no time to rethink a paper in light of what had just been presented. > Twice-yearly Usenix conferences are traditional; I don't seriously > imagine that will be changed soon... I hope not. For those of us in the technical hinterlands, it's a good way to find out pieces of what's going on--something which needs to be done more than once a year! >...Or perhaps there should be a series of half-day tutorials presented > throughout the week. I've heard people complaining that there were too many good tutorials on too few days. Perhaps there would be some way to expand the tutorial part of the conference and shrink the tech sessions correspondingly? Perhaps you could split it 3:2 days tutorial:tech? Or perhaps use Wed AM for half-day more advanced tutorials? That could draw people who want a tutorial and the tech sessions. It would allow people coming for just the tech sessions to arrive Wed AM instead of Tue PM, which saves a day's lodging. BUT if you shrink the tech sessions too much, it won't be worth a long journey. There's a zillion little people-interaction issues like this...I can speculate but I don't really know if these ideas could work. (I don't even want to think about the effect on logistics...the folks who do that stuff juggle an amazing number of factors.) -- Dick Dunn rcd@ico.isc.com uucp: {ncar,nbires}!ico!rcd (303)449-2870 ...Simpler is better.
rcd@ico.ISC.COM (Dick Dunn) (07/06/89)
In article <11753@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com>, smb@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com (Steven M. Bellovin) writes in response to some criticism of Baltimore USENIX tech sessions: > > The overhead slides were generally unreadable (I sat about halfway back) > > Often, authors don't follow the guidelines they're sent on point size, Amen! The guidelines, incidentally, are very explicit about what will and won't work. > ... This time, the situation was exacerbated because most people used > the overhead projector, rather than more-legible 35mm slides... There were some rather poor slides too--darkish yellow letters on a dark blue background. But let's not be too quick to say everyone should be using slides--there are some compelling reasons to use transparencies for an overhead projector: - It takes skilled people and special equipment to produce good slides. Many smaller organizations don't have it. Good overhead transparencies can be produced on a < $4k laser printer on a PC. Smaller organizations DO have this sort of equipment because the dog-and-pony shows they're doing all the time need overheads. - The overhead format is more convenient and familiar to many folk. - When you're doing that one last proofreading on Friday afternoon before you go to the conference, and you find that you wrote "Denise Ritchie", you can run off a new overhead yourself in a couple of minutes with nobody else's help. - When you're sitting in the hotel room going over the talk the night before, and you discover that LR(k) somehow became LURK, you can patch over it with a marker. - When you're answering a question about "that slide about work- stations promoting Ferrari ownership" you can go back to it directly (by calling for the overhead) instead of subjecting a thousand people to the dizzying process of cycling backward through two dozen slides in an automatic changer. (In Baltimore, the people who used slides generally had trouble backing up at all. This is a common phenomenon.) I think it would be worthwhile looking for the best possible projection technology rather than trying to encourage the use of slides. >...in the Baltimore auditorium, only the main, direct-projection screen > was used. At many other recent Usenix conferences, there were video > screens around the room with the slides shown on them; that helped > a lot. Agreed, that would have helped a lot. Baltimore seemed wider and shallower, but not enough so to eliminate the need for additional screens further back. > While I'm at it, let me throw in a plug for art departments. Most large > companies have them, and speakers from such companies should take > advantage of their services to get some *good* slides made. Remember -- > these folks are just as much professionals at their jobs as you are at > yours. I realize that some people don't have access to such facilities, > or can't afford it if they do. But there were many folks who could have > but didn't. I'm curious about just how many speakers or potential speakers really have access to such facilities. It must be very convenient for it to be useful, for the reasons I mentioned above. Obviously the AT&T or DEC sized places can do it. At the size of a company like Interactive (a few hundred people) the art dept exists but may not be geared to producing material for technical presentations. Where's the breakpoint in the commercial world-- perhaps a Kperson? How are universities set for this? Note that it's more than just having an art dept; they have to be able to deal with your material, which may contain tricky technical stuff (and they must be trained *not* to fix things which look obviously wrong or silly!:-), and they have to be able to turn it around pretty fast. -- Dick Dunn rcd@ico.isc.com uucp: {ncar,nbires}!ico!rcd (303)449-2870 ...Simpler is better.
msb@ho5cad.att.com (Mike Balenger) (07/06/89)
In article <15901@vail.ICO.ISC.COM> rcd@ico.ISC.COM (Dick Dunn) writes: > - When you're doing that one last proofreading on Friday afternoon > before you go to the conference, and you find that you wrote > "Denise Ritchie", you can run off a new overhead yourself in a > couple of minutes with nobody else's help. > - When you're sitting in the hotel room going over the talk the night > before, and you discover that LR(k) somehow became LURK, you can > patch over it with a marker. These aren't arguments AGAINST overhead projectors. They're arguments FOR practicing (perfecting) your talk before the last minute. A dry run to your own organization (i.e. ~5-30 folks in audience) will pick out the typos, and allow you to present a better talk to Usenix (~300 folks in audience). You owe an audience that size a good talk -- one that has been presented (or practiced) AT LEAST ONCE previously. Come on. The arguments here have been that the talks weren't interesting enough. Much of this is due to PRESENTATION, not CONTENT. Don't advocate a last minute effort for the talks. Those kinds of talks are best left at home. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- <cute quote> Michael S. Balenger (201) 949-8789 <cute disclaimer> AT&T Bell Labs Room 1L-405 msb@ho5cad.att.com Crawfords Corner Road att!ho5cad!msb Holmdel, NJ 07733
reggie@dinsdale.nm.paradyne.com (George W. Leach) (07/06/89)
In article <15898@vail.ICO.ISC.COM> rcd@ico.ISC.COM (Dick Dunn) writes: >In article <1815@ucsd.EDU>, brian@ucsd.EDU (Brian Kantor) writes: >> I remarked earlier this year that perhaps the Usenix conferences were >> being held too often; the evidence at the time was the list of papers to >> be presented at the Baltimore conference... >There's a good case for that. There are other reasons that people want two >conferences a year, of course. >> Twice-yearly Usenix conferences are traditional; I don't seriously >> imagine that will be changed soon... >I hope not. For those of us in the technical hinterlands, it's a good way >to find out pieces of what's going on--something which needs to be done >more than once a year! What I don't get is that USENIX has been holding twice a year conferences for quite some time now. The attendance continues to increase and the popularity of UNIX is as well. There should be a larger base from which to draw upon for submissions. Over the past several years the number of workshops has increased quite a bit as well. Is that activity draining off too many potential submissions for the conferences? Maybe, maybe not. >>...Or perhaps there should be a series of half-day tutorials presented >> throughout the week. >I've heard people complaining that there were too many good tutorials on >too few days. Perhaps there would be some way to expand the tutorial part >of the conference and shrink the tech sessions correspondingly? [stuff deleted about tradeoffs and people issues] Remember there are three categories of people to deal with: (1) technical session-only attendees (2) technical session and tutorial attendees (3) tutorial-only attendees The tutorials seem to be a phenomenal success at every conference. I know that many people do have a difficult time choosing between tutorials scheduled on the same day. Perhaps some of the more popular tutorials could be presented more than once at a conference? If there is a problem with the number of available rooms, then perhaps certain less well attended tutorials could be dropped in favor of repeating others? Back in 1986 at the Denver Conference the tutorials and technical sessions were run concurrently. This worked out well for some people who were not interested in the UNIX on the BIG IRON or the UNIX and ADA Technical Sessions. However, the way in which technical sessions are put together lately I doubt this would be workable. I can not see missing an entire days worth of presentations. In fact, I hated the dual track format of the Dallas Conference in 1988!!! I was running back and forth between sessions. I've experienced the same problem at OOPSLA. Yet, I also know there has been an unusual number of people who go to USENIX JUST FOR THE TUTORIALS!!! I even knew someone who flew from New Jersey out to San Diego just for two tutorials and then left before the conference started!!!! If during the course of a days technical session there are some presentations that are not of interest to an individual there are plenty of activities to fill that time, eg. meeting colleagues, attending vendor exhibitions, demos, suites, etc..... George W. Leach AT&T Paradyne (uunet|att)!pdn!reggie Mail stop LG-133 Phone: 1-813-530-2376 P.O. Box 2826 FAX: 1-813-530-8224 Largo, FL USA 34649-2826
karish@forel.stanford.edu (Chuck Karish) (07/06/89)
In article <15901@vail.ICO.ISC.COM> rcd@ico.ISC.COM (Dick Dunn) wrote: >But let's not be too quick to say everyone should be >using slides--there are some compelling reasons to use transparencies for >an overhead projector: > - It takes skilled people and special equipment to produce good > slides. Many smaller organizations don't have it. Good overhead > transparencies can be produced on a < $4k laser printer on a PC. Add a copy stand ($100-200), a camera ($250), and an orange filter ($15) and you can make blue slides from anything that would go onto an overhead transparency. It's just not that difficult. Use Vericolor film, at about 4 ISO. In my experience, it's easier to make sharp-looking slides than really good overheads. Especially so if the presentation includes photographs. Slide projectors generally do a better job of filling a big screen with an undistorted image. > - When you're answering a question about "that slide about work- > stations promoting Ferrari ownership" you can go back to it > directly (by calling for the overhead) instead of subjecting a > thousand people to the dizzying process of cycling backward > through two dozen slides in an automatic changer. Due more to incompetent A/V help than to a deficiency in the medium. If the speaker knows which slide (s)he wants, the projectionist should be able to select it immediately, without cycling through the others. Chuck Karish {decwrl,hpda}!mindcrf!karish (415) 493-7277 karish@forel.stanford.edu
henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (07/06/89)
In article <11755@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com> kpv@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com (Phong Vo[drew]) writes: >A reasonable approach that could have been taken for the Baltimore conference >was to re-invite some of the papers rejected in the San Diego conference >because of lack of space or because they did not meet the themes of the time. >Come to think of it, it's probably not a bad idea to keep a list of submitted >papers that were considered good quality but not meeting some criteria >specific to a particular conference... There is a small problem with this: you are assuming that good papers get rejected for such reasons. This certainly wasn't true of San Diego (I was on the SD Program Committee); the only really good paper we rejected was one that simply had absolutely nothing to do with Unix. Other than that, we didn't reject *anything* we considered really good -- we couldn't afford to. We had no lack of space: we could have found room for twice as many papers. We had no conference-specific criteria, either. Your pool of good-but-rejected papers simply doesn't exist. -- $10 million equals 18 PM | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology (Pentagon-Minutes). -Tom Neff | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu
henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (07/06/89)
In article <15898@vail.ICO.ISC.COM> rcd@ico.ISC.COM (Dick Dunn) writes: >... the Baltimore CFP >asked for full papers by the submission deadline; I believe that San Diego >had allowed for extended abstracts and I know that the upcoming DC needs >only abstracts... Unfortunately, there is a problem here. Judging submissions based on less than full papers does make things easier for submitters... but it makes things harder for the program committee. It is almost impossible to judge the quality of a paper from an abstract. DC wants extended abstracts, which improves the situation, but it can still make life difficult (especially since people confuse "extended abstract" with "abstract" -- I urged, and urge again, that that phrase be changed to something less misleading, like "incomplete papers"). San Diego got a mixture of completed papers and extended abstracts, which mostly weren't that bad to deal with, but there were cases where some of us had reservations because the extended abstract was a bit too abstract. -- $10 million equals 18 PM | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology (Pentagon-Minutes). -Tom Neff | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu
smb@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com (Steven M. Bellovin) (07/06/89)
Dick Dunn raises some good points to rebut my preference for 35 mm slides. A few comments in response... First, experience using overhead transparencies (as opposed to preparing them) doesn't transfer very well. The environment at Usenix is totally different. You're not flipping the viewgraphs yourself (oh, for a button to signal the person changing them, instead of an incessant ``next slide, please''!), you don't have intimate contact with your audience (in fact, given the TV lights, you can't even see your audience), and pointing to the screen with a light saber is very different than using a pointer or pen on a viewgraph machine. Second, a Usenix conference is not the place for casual, unprepared talks. You should be doing your preparation and proof-reading well ahead of time; most folks, incidentally, would benefit from a rehearsal of their talks. (Ability to give a good talk to a large audience is not the same as the ability to talk to a small audience is not the same as being able to do the work in the first place. But practice helps.) I'm as guilty as the next person of waiting till the last minute; worse yet, my lecturing habits are such that I give *better* talks, at least to small groups, when I prepare the talk the day before, an odd fact I learned during several years of teaching. But I *don't* do that for major talks.... Finally, random-access slide projectors do exist, or at least did; I'm not certain if they're suitable for Usenix use, though. I've asked the Powers that Be to investigate. --Steve Bellovin
gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn) (07/06/89)
In article <444@warlock.UUCP> gregb@dowjone.UUCP (Gregory S. Baber) writes: >Again, I didn't stay for the full week, and this was my first conference, >but is this fairly typical of the paper presentations? If so, I might be >tempted to skip the presentations altogether and just read the proceedings. I think the technical sessions were fairly typical. Note that there is a LOT more to USENIX than the formal presentations. In fact, apart from selected talks such as Rob Pike's, most of my time at USENIX is spent talking with exhibitors, in informal discussions with software developers ("old friends", mostly), and at BOF sessions. In most cases the conference proceedings can be read in place of the presentations.
dyer@spdcc.COM (Steve Dyer) (07/07/89)
The superior random-access capability of overheads is really a red herring,
given the fact that you the speaker are not able to leaf through them.
In every other respect, slides have a whole lot more "punch", and they can
be easily prepared from laser printer output by commercial photography shops
located in even mid-sized cities.
In addition, the fixed time allotted for a USENIX talk doesn't really give
you much time to review slides anyway. There's nothing more trying to my
patience than a speaker who attempts futilely to extemporize on some objection
or misunderstanding by an audience member, when a well-placed "see me after
the presentation" would do much better. If it takes more than 30 seconds to
reply to a question, I defer it.
Finally, I cannot emphasize enough the importance of rehearsal for USENIX
presentations. It improves everyone's delivery, and makes you conscious
of time, pacing and clarity. I've always done at least two rehearsals; one
or more before a small group, where they could critique delivery, timing, etc.,
and another formal presentation (dress rehearsal) before your own department
or members of your company. Anyone who attempts to give a new talk without
this preparation is asking for trouble.
Finally, I think this problem with quality would all disappear if there were
only one USENIX Conference (as we know it now) per year. The program committee
would have a larger field of papers to choose from. I'd rather have one
quality conference rather than two mediocre ones.
--
Steve Dyer
dyer@ursa-major.spdcc.com aka {ima,harvard,rayssd,linus,m2c}!spdcc!dyer
dyer@arktouros.mit.edudavid@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae) (07/07/89)
Just for the sake of argument ...
supposing I came in with a video tape made from my Amiga which
is the information I wish to give as my presentation. Or possibly
I come in with the Amiga itself?
In either case I'd want to be displaying a video image up on the
big screen. In both cases the video image does adhere to the
proper standards.
What would happen?
With having the Amiga right there, I could have the same advantage
of transparencies. (eg, ease of accessing particular ones). And at
the same time it's a nice screen that does follow the proper standards.
--
<- David Herron; an MMDF guy <david@ms.uky.edu>
<- ska: David le casse\*' {rutgers,uunet}!ukma!david, david@UKMA.BITNET
<-
<- New word for the day: Obnoxity -- an act of obnoxiousnesstrb@haddock.ima.isc.com (Andrew Tannenbaum) (07/07/89)
In article <11758@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com> smb@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com (Steven M. Bellovin) writes: > The environment at Usenix is totally different. You're not flipping > the viewgraphs yourself (oh, for a button to signal the person changing > them, instead of an incessant ``next slide, please''!) USENIX should be able to work out the technology for slide/foil flipping without "next slide please" - either with a remote control to the slide projector or with a beeper-button wired to an earphone that the foil flipper is wearing. While it can occasionally be amusing to watch a speaker and flipper send semaphores with their hats, I think we have the technology to do it out of band. Besides the fact that many presenters put too much small text on their slides, one thing that often bothers me about viewgraphs at USENIX is that the images on the screens usually suffer from severe keystoning - because of the angle of projection, the top is wider than the bottom - yecch. If we must have viewgraphs, either the screens should be tilted or special lenses should be used to compensate for this distortion. Andrew Tannenbaum Interactive Cambridge, MA +1 617 661 7474
dyer@spdcc.COM (Steve Dyer) (07/07/89)
In article <12083@s.ms.uky.edu> david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae) writes: >Just for the sake of argument ... >supposing I came in with a video tape made from my Amiga which >is the information I wish to give as my presentation. Or possibly >I come in with the Amiga itself? At the Dallas Winter 88 USENIX, the folks from CMU speaking about the Andrew environment gave their entire presentation using the Andrew environment running on some RTs, displayed on a light pipe. Quite spiffy. -- Steve Dyer dyer@ursa-major.spdcc.com aka {ima,harvard,rayssd,linus,m2c}!spdcc!dyer dyer@arktouros.mit.edu
smb@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com (Steven M. Bellovin) (07/07/89)
In all recent conferences I'm familiar with, a video tape would be no problem at all. In fact, there have been several at recent conferences. If you used an oddball video format (or perhaps a non-NTSC one), life might be more problematic; check in advance with the conference chair. I'd very strongly recommend against trying a live demo with a computer. Being a devotee of the One True Prophet Murphy, I'm quite certain that a crucial disk sector went bad just after your last rehearsal, in the conference hall itself... Doing good video presentation is, in my experience (as an observer), even more difficult than a more conventional talk, if for no other reason than that most folks have less practice with it. Take your time, do it right, and edit the tape if necessary.
msb@sq.sq.com (Mark Brader) (07/08/89)
> If people want more good papers, they should start submitting them.
But what people want is good papers written by *other* people!
They already know about their own work...
--
Mark Brader, SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, utzoo!sq!msb, msb@sq.com
"Omit needless code! Omit needless code! Omit needless code!"
-- Chip Salzenberg, paraphrasing Strunk & White
This article is in the public domain.roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) (07/08/89)
In <13959@haddock.ima.isc.com> trb@haddock.ima.isc.com (Andrew Tannenbaum): > If we must have viewgraphs, either the screens should be tilted > or special lenses should be used to compensate for this distortion. Surely a bunch of computer-types can do better than this, no? First, calculate the coordinate system transform function imposed by the tilted screen. Then, calculate the inverse function and apply that you your viewgraph when you print it. -- Roy Smith, Public Health Research Institute 455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016 {allegra,philabs,cmcl2,rutgers,hombre}!phri!roy -or- roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu "The connector is the network"
kolstad@prisma (07/09/89)
Slides must be projected in a fairly darkened room. Overheads may be shown in fairly well lit facilities. This point alone causes some people to prefer overheads. RK
ggw@wolves.UUCP (Gregory G. Woodbury) (07/09/89)
In article <1989Jul7.183147.7129@sq.sq.com> msb@sq.com (Mark Brader) writes: >> If people want more good papers, they should start submitting them. > >But what people want is good papers written by *other* people! >They already know about their own work... > Sure, I know my own work, and I think that someone out there might like to hear about it, BUT... I'm just the computer guru for a soft-science discipline shop (demographics) and don't get the consideration of taking the time to prepare papers and going to conferences to present them. Besides that, the USENIX Call for Participation lists the "themes" for the meetings, and my problems don't seem to match the recent themes.
msb@sq.sq.com (Mark Brader) (07/14/89)
> Slides must be projected in a fairly darkened room. > Overheads may be shown in fairly well lit facilities. > This point alone causes some people to prefer overheads. Overheads shown in fairly well lit facilities appear as light gray on white. This point alone causes some people to prefer anything but. -- Mark Brader, SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, utzoo!sq!msb, msb@sq.com "Have you ever heard [my honesty] questioned?" "I never even heard it mentioned." -- Every Day's a Holiday This article is in the public domain.
henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (07/14/89)
In article <1S3gCM#zOlw6=ggw@wolves.uucp> ggw@wolves.UUCP (Gregory G. Woodbury) writes: > Besides that, the USENIX Call for Participation lists the "themes" >for the meetings, and my problems don't seem to match the recent themes. Except on one or two occasions when the whole conference has been structured around them, the "themes" are clearly intended as suggestions, not mandatory topics. Compare the call-for-papers "themes" with the actual topics in the conference proceedings of any recent Usenix; there isn't a whole lot of correlation. Unless things pick up radically from the last couple of times, it is most unlikely that a decent paper with some connection to Unix will be rejected. But if you do not submit it, it *cannot* be accepted. -- $10 million equals 18 PM | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology (Pentagon-Minutes). -Tom Neff | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu
smb@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com (Steven M. Bellovin) (07/15/89)
In article <1S3gCM#zOlw6=ggw@wolves.uucp>, ggw@wolves.UUCP (Gregory G. Woodbury) writes: > Besides that, the USENIX Call for Participation lists the "themes" > for the meetings, and my problems don't seem to match the recent themes. In the Baltimore Call for Papers, the following phrase appears: Appropriate topics for presentation include, but are not limited to: Similar language has been included in virtually every other announcement I've seen.
chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (07/15/89)
smb@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com (Steven M. Bellovin) writes: >The Program Committee -- of which I was a member -- was disappointed in >the quality of papers submitted. The subject was raised at the open >Board meeting at Usenix; no consensus on what to do about it was reached. >Remember one thing -- we can't schedule papers that aren't submitted. >If people want more good papers, they should start submitting them. Part of the problem, I think, is that Un*x itself has grown up. In the Good Old Days of Usenix, we were talking about something that was primarily an educational and research toy, so you'd do something interesting and write a paper on it. Un*x is big business now. Different Un*x boxes are fighting for revenue and value-added compatibility is the name of the game ("yes, we're compatible, but we just happen to have all this neat stuff nobody else has...."). So I'm sure some folks are doing lots of interesting things they'd love to talk about but the lawyers won't let them -- or by the time they do get approval, it isn't interesting any more. Technical papers are a prime focus when you're doing research. Much of the Un*x community these days, though, aren't researching any more, they're doing comercial development of some kind or another, and I think that makes it harder to coax papers out of them and their companies. So while the Unix audience and the Unix world have grown massively, I don't think the pool of paper writer's has grown significantly. Many of the names in the Baltimore proceedings are the same names I find in the San Diego proceedings. Chuq Von Rospach =|= Editor,OtherRealms =|= Member SFWA/ASFA chuq@apple.com =|= CI$: 73317,635 =|= AppleLink: CHUQ [This is myself speaking. No company can control my thoughts.] You are false data. Therefore I shall ignore you.