[sigcomm] attendance policies for SIGCOMM-affiliated events

[Fred Douglis]

As a past organizer of both an IEEE-CS event with similar issues, and
an independent workshop, I thought it might be worth speaking up.
Apologies for the length.

First, the IEEE-CS event.  I was the general chair of WWOS-IV, the
precursor to HOTOS.  When I became chair of TCOS and IEEE-CS wanted a
formal steering committee for all conferences, I was the SC chair for
several years.

As Larry has now pointed out, the example of IMW becoming IMC is very
different, I think, from the HOTOS/HOTNETS/HOT* mold.  HOTOS and
several conferences like it are targeted for small audiences by
design.  IMW being limited because of venue size suggests a FCFS
registration policy, with spaces set aside for authors and organizers.
HOTOS would set aside spaces for authors and organizers too, but the
difference was that after those spaces were set aside, there was just
about nothing left.

Back in 1993, when we did WWOS, someone pointed out that IEEE-CS laws
precluded these sorts of biased limited attendance.  So we could say
there are only 50 attendees, but officially, we had to fill them FCFS
and ignore who actually was presenting papers.  A rather ludicrous way
to run a small workshop, and after some debate, we basically ignored
the official requirement and did the right thing.  I have no idea
whether IEEE-CS still officially precludes the authors-only style of
workshop.  It seems like Vern's note was suggesting that ACM SIGCOMM
might decide as an organization to frown on it or support it, but
without considering whether ACM itself has a policy on the matter.

 From the standpoint of SIGCOMM policy, I have two concrete
recommendations:

1) Yes, you should allow HOTNETS to run indefinitely as a limited,
by-invitation-only workshop, where invitations are mostly the result
of submissions.  But these should be the exception, not the rule.  One
workshop like this per SIG or TC seems quite reasonable.

2) Any policy on this should start at the grass-roots level, but then
rather than having different policies for each SIG, I believe you
should push for an ACM-wide agreement.

Now for the flip side.  I was the program chair of the Web Caching
Workshop a couple of years ago, and wound up being its SC chair as
well as it moved under the IEEE-CS Technical Committee on the
Internet.  I felt *very* strongly that the workshop should get the
backing of a professional organization, after my role as PC chair
turned into also hosting the event at my company (when SARS forced the
relocation of it from China).  The reason is simple:
ACM/IEEE/USENIX/etc provide financial support, both in the event the
conference loses money and in the event of some sort of liability.

When WCW moved to IBM, only an additional donation from IBM in lieu of
particpant registration fees kept it from not only losing money but
burning up the leftover money from the previous conferences.  (Note
that we had not obtained in advance any official financial commitment
to absorb these losses -- we weren't even planning to host the
workshop.  That was my mistake, due to so many years of conferences
with IEEE backing.)

But what if you run a bus tour (as we did) and something Very Bad
happens?  Obviously the charter company will be at risk, but in this
day I can't imagine people not coming after anyone else who had a hand
in it.  If sponsored by ACM, then ACM gets to handle this with their
insurance.  If run by a haphazard consortium of universities or
companies, this is less clear to me.  I think the only alternative to
a professional organization is a "company" chartered specifically to
run the conference, a la IW3C2 for the WWW conference.

I really think you want HOTNETS to stick to ACM.  Or at least make
sure that every volunteer knows that the "extra burden of running a
workshop" (in Larry's words) includes very serious financial
questions.

Note, I'm not a lawyer, and I may be completely deluded about the
risks involved, or lack thereof.  If others have more confidence in
these independent workshops, I'd love to hear from them.  But I was
very sorry to have gotten into that situation, and I advise against
it.


--
Fred Douglis
IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
fdouglis at us.ibm.com
http://www.research.ibm.com/people/f/fdouglis/