[sigcomm] attendance policies for SIGCOMM-affiliated events

[Larry Peterson]

Joe, I disagree that it's a private meeting. The CFP is published
widely, anyone can submit, and the these papers are the primary
factor in deciding who can attend.

Just to clarify another point (and I'm going from memory here),
the only case I remember a decision being made to invite an
author of a paper not accepted was to invite a student that had
applied for a travel grant.

BTW, I'm not claiming that the chairs have never invited anyone
that was not a student or a co-author, just that the numbers are
very small. I could make an argument that one of the PC and chair's
obligations is to put together as interesting of program as
possible, and one that has the most value to the authors (e.g.,
in terms of feedback). Having 4-5 invitations to use at their
discretion is not an unreasonable tool to achieve that goal.

Larry


On Oct 25, 2005, at 2:35 PM, Joe Touch wrote:



>
>
> 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
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