> Seeing the rationale for rejecting the talk, I swore the reviewers > must have looked at a different talk !
this is a fact of life submitting papers. happens regularly with academic pcs. i had a paper rejected for a puny conference that was then accepted for sigcomm this year. go figure. > 1) If people have the energy and time to contribute, they ought to be > encouraged to do so. yep. but encouragement != acceptance. do not make the pc a rubber stamp > 2) It is in the best interests of the community, from a long term > perspective, to help develop these people with the inclination to > contribute, and to help develop their presentations and ensure their > continued willingness to contribute into the future. and apple pie is wonderful, especially with vanilla ice cream. > 3) The shepparding of *all* reasonably interesting talk ideas should > be part of the process. agreed > Among people whose talks were rejected in the past, > A) only a couple of them turned in presentation abstracts again, > B) some don't attend NANOG again, soured by the experience or perhaps > feeling that they clearly don't belong in this crowd, and/or > C) relationships between the submitter and the members of the reviewer > panel are strained this is also a fact of life with pc-driven conferences. the question is whether the talk was mis-judges not whether the submitter had a delicate ego. > I don't think we are doing enough to actively go out and get good > talks, sheppard the next generations of speakers, and grow the > NANOG community. i agree. we are doing a lot, but, judging by the small number of good submissions not enough. either that, or nanog's days for conference material have passed. > A) Accountability. The program committee members each have to > find and assemble 90 minutes of talks for the program at least > once a year. there are good recruiters. there are good reviewers. there are good shepherds. the three sets are rarely congruent. > B) Transparency. The speaker prospects have the opportunity to > have frank brainstorming and discussion session with the Program > Committee member that is ultimately responsible for their > section. The Program Committee person will know what the speaker > will say, why the talk is important, and will ensure that if the > talk is rejected, the rejected speaker will understand why the > talk was rejected. this is shepherding, not transparency. it is good if done well. if done poorly, very easy with a belligerent wannabe speaker with ego, it can be a recipe for explosion. > C) Leverage the Expertise and People Network of the Program > Committee. The charter currently says that all PC members will > review all talks, a mistake in my opinion. given the small number of talks, not a large mistake. and it gets us diverse expertise looking at the papers. if we had 2x, 3x, or more submissions, this would be an undue burden. randy
