Comments for IEEE Conference on Computational Complexity ../../../forum Fri, 06 Jun 2014 13:39:41 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.6 Comment on Decision by Jeff Kinne ../../../forum/decision/#comment-3056 Fri, 16 May 2014 15:16:41 +0000 ../../../forum/?page_id=292#comment-3056 A decision has been reached by the steering committee – see the above post.

]]>
Comment on Request for Volunteers by Jeff Kinne ../../../forum/request-for-volunteers/#comment-2124 Tue, 29 Apr 2014 15:23:07 +0000 ../../../forum/?page_id=286#comment-2124 The above message was sent to the CCC announcements email list, and has been posted here as well for those who might not be on the email list. If you can volunteer or help with startup funds, please write to Dieter with the information asked for above.

]]>
Comment on Results of the Vote by Jeff KInne ../../../forum/results-of-the-vote/#comment-1753 Tue, 22 Apr 2014 13:39:47 +0000 ../../../forum/?page_id=280#comment-1753 The results from the online vote are posted above. Recall that the vote is non-binding, and that the steering committee must now decide what to do.

]]>
Comment on Opening the Forum by Maurice Cochand ../../../forum/about/#comment-1442 Tue, 15 Apr 2014 01:57:38 +0000 ../../../forum/?page_id=42#comment-1442 Computational Complexity is a mathematical discipline, and Computer Science has been one of the main problem-providers for Mathematics in the recent decades. Should a partnership be necessary, then it is in that direction that we should be searching, where we would get the best improvement regarding visibility, one goal being in particular to get CC integrated in the standard mathematical curriculum.

]]>
Comment on Statement from the SIGACT chair by Paul Beame ../../../forum/sigact-chair/#comment-1425 Mon, 14 Apr 2014 16:45:06 +0000 ../../../forum/?page_id=233#comment-1425 Answering Salil: Contingency is just that; it is not at all a part of the conference closing. The way things are supposed to work for jointly sponsored conferences is that prior to any fees being deducted, the actual expenses are deducted from the actual income and these are divided 50-50 between IEEE and ACM. On the ACM side, this 50% goes direct to SIGACT except for 16% of this 50% or 8% which SIGACT pays to ACM. The rest is surplus for SIGACT. At IEEE 20% of this 50% is 10% which IEEE keeps as expenses (or $2500, whichever is larger). Of the remaining amount which is the surplus, the TCMF will get 50% the year after conference closing (to spend in that year, unlike SIGACT the TCMF has no ability to carry over funds) if the conference is in good standing (no recent deficits) and the conference closing has happened within 6 months of the end of the conference. Back in 2011, when I was TCMF chair there was some discussion at IEEE of an experiment of letting the conference itself keep some of the surplus but I have not heard of the status of that proposal since.

]]>
Comment on Opening the Forum by Jeff Kinne ../../../forum/about/#comment-1385 Mon, 14 Apr 2014 01:31:15 +0000 ../../../forum/?page_id=42#comment-1385 The IEEE TCMF chair David Shmoys has now posted his thoughts. That post is linked from the forum front page; the direct link is ../../../forum/statement-from-tcmf/

]]>
Comment on Opening the Forum by Dieter van Melkebeek ../../../forum/about/#comment-1375 Sun, 13 Apr 2014 22:37:51 +0000 ../../../forum/?page_id=42#comment-1375 In reply to Salil Vadhan.

I agree about the main risk. I didn’t make this clear, but my concern about the possible transition – are there enough people willing to commit and deliver – applies to the steady state, as well, and is arguably more of a worry for the steady state than the transition period. On the voting ballot, this rationale for not going solo falls under “maintaining continuity”.

On the other hand, I’m not sure that IEEE provides an effective buffer. The only checks I’m aware of are the budget before the conference and the financial report afterwards. None of the ones I’ve been involved in have resulted in questions let alone changes. There are no checks in place to make sure we stay within budget, nor to make sure the proceedings are actually published. In fact, last year we had to prod IEEE to make sure the proceedings appeared in the digital library; they still only appear in one of the two libraries (IEEExplore but not CSDL).

I also agree about attempting to make changes from within. We have been trying to do so for a quite a while. The grievances started more than fifteen years ago. About five years ago (I don’t remember the exact year) there was an actual vote during the business meeting with a clear majority to go solo, but we didn’t act on it. If nothing else, this should have sent a clear message. In the mean time there have been some changes but the demand for further changes seems to grow faster.

In my opinion we (also) need a change in attitude with respect to service to the community. This holds irrespective of whether CCC becomes independent or not. I’m not sure how to affect such a change. Becoming independent may help by increasing the sense of ownership and thereby hopefully also responsibility – we wouldn’t be able to blame IEEE or anyone else anymore – but this may be wishful thinking. On the ballot the last question is intended to get a sense of the level of commitment people are willing to make.

]]>
Comment on Statement from the SIGACT chair by Salil Vadhan ../../../forum/sigact-chair/#comment-1368 Sun, 13 Apr 2014 20:30:30 +0000 ../../../forum/?page_id=233#comment-1368 In reply to Jeff KInne.

Hi Paul,

I want to confirm my understanding of your comments regarding conference budgeting. As I understand it (and in my own experience a CCC local arrangements chair), the complaint is not about the fact that the conference needs to include a contingency in the budget (which is of course a good idea), but rather that unused contingency does not get returned to the conference or TCMF for the next year (though your comments suggest that maybe TCMF is able to get 50% of it to use two years later). The other grievance is the 20% IEEE service fee. From your response, it sounds like ACM is better than IEEE in both respects – it returns the entire unused contingency and any surplus to SIGACT, and has a 16% service fee. With a jointly sponsored conference, I understand that the service fee would be the average (18%). What would happen with unused contingency and other budget surpluses?

Thanks!

Salil

]]>
Comment on Opening the Forum by Salil Vadhan ../../../forum/about/#comment-1362 Sun, 13 Apr 2014 17:06:44 +0000 ../../../forum/?page_id=42#comment-1362 Apologies for joining this discussion so late. I was local arrangements chair for CCC 2010.

Like others, my interaction with IEEE as a local organizer for CCC was mainly a source of frustration rather than assistance. In particular, the fact that the incentives force us to aim for as tiny a surplus as possible (since further surpluses don’t get returned to the conference) is stressful for the local organizers (since it raises the risk of running a deficit, for which I think the conference gets penalized), and it does not seem like a good business practice. Also, a fair amount of time was wasted with the various on-line forms and bureaucracy. The only benefits I felt from the IEEE as a local organizer is that it provided a set of checklists and deadlines, which were reminders of the many things that need to get done in organizing a conference (as well as many useless things forced on us by IEEE). This of course can be substituted by having good institutional memory within the conference.

In my mind, the main risk of “going solo” is not any of the things listed in the manifesto, but the way in which having an established scholarly society provides stability in case the conference goes through a period with irresponsible leadership (whether in the steering committee or local arrangements chairs), which could conceivably squander the conference’s money, fail to publish proceedings, or do other disastrous things. Thus, when setting up an organization to run an independent conference, it’s important to put in many checks and balances to prevent these kinds of problems in the future.

In principle, scholarly societies like IEEE and ACM are supposed to represent the community’s interests, and if we want change, we should do all we can to effect change from within, and only go solo if we conclude that this is not going to work. For this reason, I think it’s really important that we hear from the IEEE TCMF chair on the state of effecting change within IEEE.

On becoming a joint IEEE/ACM conference: I have interacted with IEEE and ACM in very different ways, so it is difficult to do a real comparison. I was never a local organizer for an ACM conference (and had a relatively painless experience as an ACM PC chair), but I do have a much better understanding of ACM as organization (having served on ACM Council for the past 5 years) than I do for IEEE. I have heard that ACM is better to work with for conference organizers, but I have no direct experience with that. I am familiar with ACM’s reaction to open access, which has been much slower than I’d like, but I don’t know how it compares to what IEEE is doing. It is now possible for ACM SIGs to purchase open access for their conference proceedings, but I think the current cost (at $1000-$1500 per paper) would be prohibitively expensive for CCC. I hope that ACM will find a way to bring these costs down, but it’s hard to predict whether that will happen any time soon.

]]>
Comment on Opening the Forum by Jan Van den Bussche ../../../forum/about/#comment-1113 Fri, 04 Apr 2014 15:33:22 +0000 ../../../forum/?page_id=42#comment-1113 As far as the prestige argument goes, note that quite a few IEEE conferences have been unmasked as fake conferences in recent years. I have been involved in the organization of the EDBT/ICDT series of conferences (International Conference on Extending Database Technology / Database Theory). These conferences exist since 1988, are being organized jointly since 2009, are have always been independent. We are doing just fine. Very recently, the former EDBT executive committee chair (Marc Scholl) started a brand new open proceedings publication initiative, see http://www.openproceedings.org

]]>