[sigcomm] sig/eurosig/asiasig?

[Nick Feamster]

Hi Jen,

On Wed, Mar 22, 2006 at 03:01:37PM -0500, Jennifer Rexford wrote:
> Good point about NSDI.  Another related conference is the (relatively) 
> new CoNext conference
> 
>    http://adetti.iscte.pt/events/CONEXT06/
>    http://dmi.ensica.fr/conext/
> 
> that is "in cooperation with SIGCOMM" (just as NSDI is).  Arguably 
> CoNext is broader than the annual SIGCOMM conference, and NSDI is 
> arguably a bit narrower (in having a systems focus), but having events 
> with different flavors might very well make sense.

The CoNext and Sigcomm submission dates and conferences are already nicely
temporally spaced.  Here's a strawman:

- Sigcomm, hosted (primarily) in North American cities; based on what we think
  of as the Sigcomm conference and with similar submission/conference dates as
  Sigcomm.  Rotate locations if necessary (e.g., to Asia and other "outreach"
  locations), but primarily host in North America.

- EuroSig, hosted in Europe, based on CoNext, and with similar submission
  dates as CoNext.  "Upgrade" to a marquee Sigcomm conference.

This visibility could arguably help CoNext get a larger pool of submissions;
it also is a way of achieving something akin to the *Crypt model by devoting
energy to improving existing conferences, rather than creating new ones.

As far as different "flavors", awhile back Scott Shenker had mentioned on this
list the need for more industry involvement (e.g., from vendors, operators,
etc.).  Having multiple conferences a year might allow one of these
conferences to cater a bit more to this crowd, as well.

> One reluctance I have about having three nearly-the-same events a year 
> is that it probably doesn't make sense to have multiple co-located 
> workshops (which have been co-located with the SIGCOMM conference 
> starting in 2003) three times a year, so we might very well want just 
> one full-week-long event and have it rotate geographies, along with some 
> near-comparable events that follow the more traditional 2.5-3 day model.

Another possibility is to have a smaller number of workshops at each
conference.  This could alleviate the frustration that interesting workshops
overlap, space out submission deadlines for workshops, etc.

If folks have friends in the crypto community, perhaps we could do some
informal data gathering (how well does this work, etc.)?  I'm happy to do a
little bit of research, too (assuming some folks think this is a good idea),
but other data points would be useful.  It could be a topic of discussion at
the Sigcomm business meeting, at any rate (again, presuming the idea is not
jettisoned before then).

-Nick