CIDR is in danger of losing its way: My Advice to Weikum, Hellerstein and Franklin by Michael Stonebraker 1

Program Committees in our Field Reward scholarship on narrow ideas Trash “loosy goosey” papers Trash anything half-baked Trash anything that resembles a “war story” Operate by consensus Net result: SIGMOD/VLDB style conferences with paper sessions full of LPUs, of interest to 10 people in the world

How Has CIDR Avoided this Fate So Far? Slanted selection of PC members Specific “non-SIGMOD” reviewing guidelines PC is advisory – organizers make actual decisions And one of them reads every paper And the organizers have not operated by consensus E.g. PC reviews sometimes ignored

CIDR Leadership is Being Passed On So how to avoid the SIGMODification of CIDR? Answer: double-blind reviewing (just kidding)

My Real Advice to the “New Gray Beards” Put your own mark on the conference E.g. might make sense to move to “demo- only” on the theory that “you have nothing to say if you can’t show it” E.g. might make sense to move to “poster- only” on the theory that this fosters discussion YGIGH (your good idea goes here)

My Real Advice to the “New Gray Beards” Ruthlessly ignore reviewer opinions This is really crucial Don’t leave Asilomar Enables a 3 person organizing committee – who can make decisions quickly and easily Figure out some solution to “paper overload” Which is very likely to descend on CIDR