[sigcomm] attendance policies for SIGCOMM-affiliated events

[Roch Guerin]

Larry,

Let me make it more explicit.

A closed venue aimed at ensuring sufficient focus to get an activity off 
the ground that eventually will benefit the whole community is perfectly OK.

A closed but more mature venue that argues that it benefits the whole 
community is what I don't buy.  Offering broad exposure to new ideas by 
allowing everyone interested to participate, at least as an audience, is 
in my mind a key requirement in order to claim that this is benefiting 
the SIG at large.

This has *nothing* to do with wether or not a small workshop is good or 
not, and everything to do with who is allowed to benefit from that goodness.
I'm sure you can make a convincing case that a private beach is "good", 
just don't ask for state or federal sponsorship for it ;-)

I'll argue that if there is a substantial demand from the community for 
a forum addressing a particular topic, then this is a sign that this 
forum has matured, as was indeed the case for IMW.  It may then well be 
that given the current state of networking research, discussing emerging 
ideas and vision statements is now a mature topic and something that 
many should be allowed to be exposed to and even involved in.  If that 
turns out to be the case, then people should be allowed that option.   
Alternatively, if Hotnets is not targeting a mature area, then it wont 
attract too many people even if you open it up.  So what's the problem?

Roch

> I'm afraid I don't understand the "transient" argument. If a
> small workshop with controlled attendance is good in years 1
> thru 3, what changes in years 4 and 5... IMW is not a good
> example since it went from workshop to conference due to a
> maturing of the area. I don't see hotnets doing that since its
> whole point is to foster a discussion about emerging ideas,
> vision statements, and the such.
>
> Larry
>
> On Nov 5, 2005, at 4:23 PM, Christophe Diot wrote:
>
>> i tend to strongly agree with this! and Larry's position sounded  
>> completely fair to me as a transient situation.
>>
>>