[sigcomm] attendance policies for SIGCOMM-affiliated events

[Roch Guerin]

My 2c in part in reaction to Greg's email on the topic, but also based 
on all the input provided so far.

>a)  one of SIGCOMM's roles is to support the networking research community. 
> (we do that, for example, by providing access to SIGCOMM publications in 
>the ACM Digital Library free of charge).  the "networking research 
>community" overlaps with SIGCOMM membership.
>  
>
Absolutely.

>b)  closed, small, workshops are very important for the research community. 
> (i've seen "small" up to 60 or so people.)
>  
>
Yes again, BUT

>(therefore, I support SIGCOMM supporting some by-invitation-only workshops.)
>  
>
I view this role as taking the form of "nurturing" seed projects so that 
we make it easier for people to explore new directions that ultimately 
will be benefit the SIGCOMM community at large.  And this does typically 
require small, focused group and is, therefore, in my mind a good 
justification for closed workshops. 

The point though is that this should NOT be a steady-state situation, 
and only meant to lower the barrier to entry in getting things started, 
i.e., provide focused forums to explore new directions and avoid doing 
so while overly burdening volunteers trying to get these started.  This 
should NOT extent to long-running event.  In my opinion, those should 
either grow-up and learn to fly on their own or go-away.  I just don't 
buy into the premises that publishing the proceedings of a closed event 
represents sufficient value to the community. 

So more specifically, in the case of HOTNETS, I believe it needs to 
either open-up or gather enough direct support from other sources to 
continue operating under the current model.

>c)  in terms of who gets invited, i'd leave it up to the organizing 
>committee, but *my* default would be: authors of accepted papers (ambiguity 
>of primary or all secondary); PC; primary authors of rejected papers, 
>assuming the rejected paper had a clue; other invitees (this last class to 
>make up < 10 % of the total attendees).  (somebody mentioned "all the 
>students you can squeeze in", which I reject:  hopefully, students will be 
>authors of papers.)
>  
>
That's again perfectly OK as part of a startup phase.  I don't consider 
this justified in the context of events that repeat regularly.

My 2c.

Roch