Dreamsongs Wiki

FederatedConference

So what would these topic areas be? Should they be

framework design_, methodologies, etc? This is how we usually

Or maybe "traditional topics", AOP, agile methods, generative

I was thinking of subcommittees like these:

• Languages and language implementation
• Aspects
• Methodologies
• Patterns
• Model Driven
• Onward!
• Foundations (the default)

-rpg

I think the best way to have a federated conference is to choose a set of thought leaders and have each of them create a mini-conference. The (amazingly successful) O'Reilly Open Source Conference appears to work this way: there is the Perl sub-conference, the Python sub-conference, the Java sub-conference, etc. The conference organizers have simply made it easier for these groups to get together. But wait, there's more:

• Federation allows attendees to take in a little of this and a little of that
• Federation allows the sub-conference organizers to organize as much or as little as they want. If they want to create just a one day workshop, that's ok - there's still a reason for people to come to the overall conference. If they want to create a full five-day action-packed event, that's ok too. Some attendees might not see the same benefits and might go to other events, but that's ok as well.
• Federation spreads the recruiting load to those most able to do the recruit: the people who know their little communities the best.

--BjornFreemanBenson

Living in a country where federation and local responsibility has a very high value, I feel it wouldn't fit for a conference like OOPSLA. To make federation work, you need some core common values and a feeling of unity among organizers and participants that is hard to design into a group of people, it needs to come from their hearts already. --PeterSommerlad

I think creating Onward! as a separate (sub) stream has been succesful, and also carried less risk, than somehow stacking the main PC and sliding a few Onward-style papers into the tech papers programme. They're quite different beasts and not interchaneable. Why not have more Onward-like substreams, and let the main tech stream do what it does best.

LateBreakingResults? (see OOPSLAvsCHIvsGRAPH)?

I have no particular comment on this topic, other than to observe that it may create a different set of problems - we'll have a more stratified / less cohesive set of people at the meeting. It could become InsidersAndOutsiders gone wild.

Many workshops have turned into mini-conferences already. In a sense, if you take all the OOPSLA workshops together, you pretty much have a federated conference already. So ... what about integrating the content of the workshops more into the main conference? In some ways, the workshops at OOPSLA are even more exciting than the technical sessions just because they're often about relatively new ideas, and represent the work of communities - they're fields for debate and they (the good ones anyway) actually identify interesting open questions. The thing is, that not everyone can make it to every workshop, or even any workshop depending on the amount of time people have, and the scheduling of the conference, etc. As such, ideas presented in workshops are done so completely without publicity.

I know that workshops do put up posters now, but I'm not sure how successful these really are in the scheme of getting all the new ideas out in an easily digestable way.

It might be an idea to have a session late in the conference that gives attendees an overview of the coolest ideas that emerged during all the workshops. Maybe it could be called something interesting, like the Workshop Insight session (maybe more interesting than that...) This session could be in any format. It could be a collection of mini-panels (6 minutes each) with lightening rounds of discussion about a topic, or some mini-presentations about the major ideas or synthesis work from the workshops. Whatever. Such a session might help out with IsAnyoneDoingAnythingInteresting...

--ElisaBaniassad

I think a federated conference has a lot of merit, however, I think the challenge is to know if OOPSLA is really "wide enough" to make it an attractive venue and still fit the "OOPLSA" mandate. Most interesting things happen at the edges and and this means overlap with other communities be they

In the ACM/IEEE world at least each of these has their own conference. Further the AOSD conference is unlikely to want to play second fiddle to OOPSLA although they see both ECOOP and OOPSLA as good venues for papers.

MatthiasFelleisen gave a really nice invited talk at ECOOP, which reminded me once again that we seem to be loosing more than gaining by forcing depth at the expense breadth (my rant http:/www.jot.fmissuesissue200305column1). Many others share this concern.

Hence it seems to be that the conference we really need is the one that at least every other year brings together the different communities from programming

common roots as well as our differences. My thought has been that this is only achieveable outside of OOPSLA/ECOOP hence MakeANewConference, but at a recent AITO (non profit that operates ECOOP) meeting there was considerable interest trying to accomodate cross cultural efforts. -- DaveThomas