Extracurricular events at STOC

I didn't do any STOC blogging this time, but I do want to say something about the extracurricular events.

For a while now, people (including me) have been clamoring for an expansion of the traditional three-days-of-talks format at theory conferences, and now STOC and FOCS (and SoCG soon!) are doing workshops, tutorials and poster sessions on a regular basis. Chandra Chekuri, Sergei Vassilvitskii and I organized the poster session at STOC this year, and Avrim Blum and Muthu (Muthu!) were in charge of workshops.

Workshops

How did they go ? The workshops, the day before the conference, looked extremely successful. Michael Kearns' morning tutorial on computational finance was standing room only in a large auditorium - I don't know the exact numbers but there were easily more than 150 people in the room. The workshops went pretty well as well: I spent much of my time at the distributed streaming workshop, and that was also standing room only, with probably at least 60 people in the room at all times.

I'm really glad that we had these events, and even happier that FOCS 2012 plans to continue the event. Speaking of which, Avrim is looking for workshop proposals for FOCS 2012, and specifically asked me to suggest that geometry folks suggest a workshop. The deadline is June 20, and all you need is a 2-page proposal and 2-3 people who'd organize it.

Posters

I'm of course biased about the poster session, but I do think it went off quite well, fueled by Howard Karloff's brilliant idea to provide ice cream sandwiches as refreshments during the event. There were 30 posters in all, and a ton of discussion. It was really nice to walk around looking at the posters and seeing the level of engagement. I polled a number of presenters and attendees, and they all seemed to enjoy the session.

The only complaint was that the poster session was too short, and that we should have left the posters up for people to browse while taking breaks. I think this is an excellent idea that the next posters committee (at FOCS 2012) should take into account.

The business meeting

We had an incredibly long business meeting - even our most rambunctious SODA meetings haven't gone on this long (almost 3 hours). For those not yet in the know, STOC 2012 is going to a two-tier format. Joan Feigenbaum is the chair, and the "must-not-be-called-senior"-PC will have 9 people on it. Their primary role will be managing the review process with the "certainly-not-junior"-PC consisting of 70-80 people who will review no more than 10 papers each, AND will be allowed to submit papers.

This is a major change for a theory conference, albeit one that was brought up for discussion at SODA 2012. I'm particularly curious to see how the whole "letting PC members submit papers" goes. Before everyone starts freaking out, it's worth pointing out that all this is effectively doing is bringing the unofficial reviewers into the fold, thereby giving them a chance to do reviews in context of the entire pool, rather than making isolated decisions. Since the unofficial reviewers were mostly drawn from the author pool, this is not too different from how it's always been. I'm hoping that the reduced load per reviewer will bring in better reviews and more consistency in decisions. 

All in all, a time of experimentation - workshops, posters, tutorials, two-tier PCs - the theory community moves slowly, but when it does move, things happen quickly :)

STOC 2012 news: posters, registration and student travel.

This is a friendly reminder to submit your 1-2 paragraph abstracts for the STOC 2012 Poster session. The deadline is Mar 31 @ 5pm PDT (via email to stoc2012posters@gmail.com). Here's how to do it, and here's why you should do it !

Remember, you DON'T need to submit an actual poster by Mar 31 - just the abstract and information on who will present.

In related STOC news, STOC 2012 registration is now live and the deadline for applying for student travel funding is April 4th.

See you in NYC !

STOC 2012 Posters: Submit your abstract now !

As I mentioned earlier, STOC 2012 is repeating the successful poster event from STOC 2011. For more details on the logistics of submitting, see my post. What I'd like to do is give you more reasons to submit !

No one attends talks !

Ok, that's a little bit of an exaggeration: but between "conference = journal in a hotel" and "chicken chicken chicken" it's fair to say that talks at conferences tend to draw only those who are particularly interested in the specifics of a work, and is less likely to draw casual attendees.

A poster session on the other hand is like wandering through a nice bookstore: you can browse the topics as you see fit, and jump into anything that catches the eye. If you're a poster presenter, this is a great opportunity to convey a higher level intuition for your work to an audience that might not be conversant in the specifics

It's all about the eyeballs !

Everyone should make posters ! We are in an attention-based economy now, and your work gets known and disseminated only if you can get people's attention. A poster is an extremely effective way to communicate with your audience, especially if you use the visual medium effectively. Most conferences now have elaborate poster sessions and it's a great way to meet people and hear about material I wouldn't have otherwise had time to assimilate.

It's all about the networking !

If you're a student, either presenting (or better yet, not presenting) at STOC, what better way to get conversations going with more senior researchers, instead of huddling together with your fellow students, wondering if you can make enough eye contact to get an intro (yes, we do notice :)). I can almost guarantee that you'd have more meaningful interactions with researchers at a poster than at a talk where people have half an eye on their email.

It's all about the impact !

So you got a paper into STOC ! Congratulations - there's a nice CV bullet for you. But what's next ? You want people to read your paper, talk about it, argue about it, and build upon it. Don't you ? Again, a well designed poster can draw in attention much more effectively than a talk in our attention-deficit world, and more attention means more discussions, and more potential impact. 

It's easy !!

Now you surely don't believe me :). If you don't. consider your options. You can use LaTeX/beamer, and here's a fantastic resource to help. You can use Powerpoint or Inkscape, or if you're one of those fancy Mac people, you can use whatever fancy Mac tools I'm not cool enough to talk about. 

Best of all, you don't need to have the poster ready by the deadline of Mar 31. All you need is a short abstract. 

So don't think ! Whether you have a paper or not, do consider submitting a poster - by Mar 31 - to stoc2012posters@gmail.com - and here are the details.

STOC 2012 Call For Posters

This year, STOC 2012 will have a poster session, reprising the successful event from STOC 2011. The poster session will be held during the main conference, and should be thought of as an extended hallway-discussion with a visual aid. The poster session will be ba separate session on its own, accompanied by refreshments. We welcome posters from attendees on research in any aspect of theoretical computer sciences, and believe presenting posters should be especially appealing for researchers with recent relevant result.

• Researchers with papers in other conferences that would be of interest to the STOC community.
• STOC 2012 authors who want to have a visual aid for extended/related discussions of their work.
• Students who wish to discuss their work in a broader context (for example, by presenting an overview of a line of research)

Submission

In order to present a poster, authors must email the following information to stoc2012posters@gmail.com by March 31, 2012, 5pm PT

• Title
• A 1-2 paragraph abstract
• Name of person presenting the poster
• Whether the presenter is planning to register for STOC

Note that poster submissions are not refereed. However, the committee reserves the right to turn down submissions deemed out of scope. If the number of poster submissions exceeds capacity, priority will be given to registered STOC attendees and secondarily according to the date of submission. Poster slots will be confirmed by Apr 10, 2012. If any slots remain, submissions received after the deadline may be considered at the discretion of the committee.

Poster Preparation

Posters should be designed to fit within a space that is 42in wide and 48in high, and may consist of a single printed poster or separate pieces. Mounted posterboards, as well as pushpins and tape for attaching your poster to the posterboard, will be provided at the conference.


STOC 2012 Posters Committee
Chandra Chekuri
Sergei Vassilvitskii
Suresh Venkatasubramanian