ACM SGB Meeting Materials February 11, 2008

There was a discussion regarding PC meetings in person or over the internet.

In terms of the PC Committee workshops, MM believes they can be online but feels that the main conference should be done in person.

MOD thinks that this decision should be left to the PC chair and should follow the same process of discussion with or without face-to-face meetings.

METRICS has a double-blind flagship conference but the PC is in person.

WEB announced that their group will have their first online meeting this year.

UCCS mainly uses communications via electronic mail with occasional face-to-face toward the end.

ECOM expressed skepticism with regard to whether the face-to-face actually helps considering the expense.

DOC uses mostly double-blind.

ACT handles all major conferences in-person but uses “Easy Share” for smaller meetings. They are concerned with arranging for international participation in the meetings.

BED has experienced no problems with electronic PC.

PLAN uses different forms for various meetings. They realize that some serve on the PC committee in order to go to the meetings and have face-to-face time with their colleagues, however, they are consistently concerned with their carbon footprint.

ARCH uses a double-blind for ISCA. They have found that electronic forms are fine for smaller meetings but are not effective for large conferences.

For ISSAC, SAM has a diverse PC for the international portion so much is done electronically.

IR previously handled everything in person but they are currently discussing moving over to electronic forms.

DOC has found that electronic options offer a better process for review.

MICRO usually does in-person double-blinds, but cases will be virtual this year.

Many of COMM’s conferences combine communication forms with many having pre-electronic discussions.

Bryant announced that each PC has its own electronic meeting.

CONEXT and SIGCOMM have shadow PCs in which a group of volunteers review the same set of papers as part of a learning process in a training facility.

Almost all MOBILE meetings are in-person but attempts are made to co-locate PC meetings for one conference at another conference. Their workshops meet electronically for the most part.

ITE has no PC committee. Instead, the PC chair sends the papers out to three reviewers. They are trying to understudy a PC chair so they can take over.

APL expressed their belief that electronic methods are the way of the future.

Similarly, KDD has been using forms of electronic conference management.

ART uses a two-tier PC committee in which the committee reviews first, followed by the chairs.

MIS also has a two-step process in which email is used before members meet at a non-major ACM conference.

SOFT understands the burden and restrictions of travel but does meet face-to-face. They try to hold PC meetings at other conferences.

Ada believes face-to-face is important but also hold small double-blind conferences via email.

DA also holds reviews as double-blind except for one workshop. They feel that electronic meetings would not work for them, although their small events are web-based. PC meetings do take place at other conferences and all large events are held in-person. For DATE, DA holds a face-to-face meeting with 350-400 PC members.

WEB has low funding for some committees, which restricts travel. As a result, they mostly do online reviewing and international PCs for small conferences.

GRAPH has face to face for GRAPH and GRAPH ASIA. The smaller meetings vary.

CHI has a lot of variation depending on conference.

ACCESS uses online systems mostly.

OPS has in-person meetings as they think they work better and have higher-quality discussions. Started PC light committee that does not have to go to the meeting. SOSP uses double-blind reviewing but finds there are difficulties in writing your paper anonymously. Also tried a shadow PC.