The Life Cycle of a Conference Jon Crowcroft, http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~jac22

Stakeholders Official Sponsor/Publisher Usenix, ACM, IEEE, other Steering Ctte, Org Ctte, Prog Ctte Community memory, admin, tech Habitual Attendees Phds, postdoc, academic, industry Recruiters (from above) Public/Post Hoc Readers of proceedings/blurbs Citers of papers/users of results etc

Timeline Steering Ctte finds OC&TPC chairs OC chairs find OC (T)PC chairs find PC members OC find venue(s) TPC&OC fire of CfP/web,publicise PC create review sys (hotcrp, easychair) OC create (and maintain) budget Run event Wrap up proceedings/budget (weeks after)

OC tasks Budget, venue, vitalls, registration 100 people 3 day event takes team of 10+ Use shared doc/repo/im tools may inherit standard budget model/constraints (e.g ieee/acm tax) Sponsorship, Web, Publicity Team need to be responsive (<same day) Deliver profit to org (or break even) What if loss? Insurance&contingencies

PC tasks Help advertise CfP Choose/Review papers (poss abstracts) Discuss reviews (poss. update) Attend (possibly online) PC meet Resolve differences, select program Possibly shepherd papers See also Shadow PCs.

Getting on OC or PC Why? What’s in it for you See process in detail Understand how to use best Goes on your CV: research, teaching, service to community May meet future nice referee May get hired How? Volunteer, mention in talks May have to have been at prior event

Annoying details Late registers Visa invite letters, no shows Dietary complexity Venue cancels Demo/poster complexity Broken format papers Bad (rude, wrong) reviews Non-responsive author (camera ready)

What more can go wrong? Not enough (decent) submissions… Cancel, downsize, invite... Not enough attendees... Invite, guests, TPC don’t do reviews well Get more TPC members Fire bad ones

References, examples http://icnp18.cs.ucr.edu/committee.html https://www.eurosys2019.org/program-committee/