[sigcomm] attendance policies for SIGCOMM-affiliated events

[Joe Touch]

Fred Douglis wrote:
...
> 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.

This is a key issue. These meetings, at some level, use or occupy shared
community resources. That's exactly why the IEEE requires open
attendance, and the ACM should as well.

Private meetings should be underwritten by private resources.

As to risks, they can be mitigated, and this is often lost in the
shuffle. I.e., cancel the bus tour if you don't get enough sign-ups. Or
keep in mind that workshops don't always have bus tours, banquets, or
the like. They are necessarily as 'risky' as the content they present,
and should be correspondingly more modest.

Joe