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For what it's worth, we had a discussion about this on the ICFP Steering Committee. Many people share the concerns raised in this thread. There was no clear majority for avoiding conferences in the US -- largely due to the reasons Julia mentions. Looking ahead, one idea might be to align the location of the different PACM PL conferences better -- for instance, ensuring that there is at least one conference in the US and Europe each year. Allowing presentations across different conferences (presenting a POPL paper at PLDI or visa versa), would make it easier for researchers to present their work at venue they can attend. This does require a bit of co-ordination at the SIGPLAN level - and it is not yet clear to me how much support there is for such an initiative. Wouter
