TC6 members,
The following note was sent last week to the members of the program committee for the TC6 stream at WCC 2002. Augusto pointed out that three members of the PC were not included in the distribution list (an error on my part), and suggested that all of the TC6 members would be interested in this information.
- Lyman
TC6 PC members,
I understand from Augusto that there is still some uncertainty about what is required for the TC6 stream at WCC'02, so I have collected the essential information into this one note for easy reference. Please let me know if I have overlooked something - thanks.
- Lyman
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1. The deadline for submission of papers (in our case, the deadline for submission of "state of the art" presentation proposals) is December 3, 2001. Our program committee (which consists of the TC6 chair, the chairs of each of our WGs and TG, Lorne Mason, and me) must select a program of between 12 and 14 90-minute sessions by February 23, 2002.
2. I don't expect to receive useful "state of the art" presentation proposals through the general Call for Papers, although we may see a few. Thus, it is very important for each of you to actively recruit someone who is qualified to give a comprehensive "state of the art" survey of the area covered by your WG. We have identified a few of these, but we still have a long way to go before we have a complete program.
3. Speakers are not required to submit papers. Each session should produce a publishable record that captures the state of the art in that area, which could be either a paper or a set of slides (with or without accompanying notes). Comments from the PC members on the specific requirements for the publishable record would be welcome! I have asked Gordon Davies, the overall editor for the WCC'02 series of Kluwer volumes (one for each stream, including the TC6 stream), if he thinks there is any problem with including a variety of materials other than traditional technical papers in the TC6 book.
4. The program for WCC'02 as a whole will have 12-14 presentation sessions, each 90 minutes long, distributed over 4 days. Although the conference organizers do not expect to fill every slot with 10 parallel sessions (one from each stream), in principle we (TC6) have 12-14 available slots in the 4-day agenda. As TC6 has 9 WGs and 1 TG, even if every WG/TG chairman is able to recruit a good "state of the art" presenter we will have 2-4 extra slots available. One of our tasks as a program committee for the TC6 stream will be to allocate our slots; we start with the assumption that each WG/TG has one, but there may be one or more WG/TG chairmen who do not propose a speaker.
5. In most cases (maybe all), each 90-minute slot will be filled by one state-of-the-art presentation. Depending on the area being covered, I can imagine dividing that presentation into two or more parts (sub-topics of the main topic), and I can also imagine having more than one speaker in a single 90-minute session. We should configure each session to best cover each area; there is no fixed or mandated structure for the sessions.
6. Whether or not a paper is submitted, I expect the TC6 program committee to review all of the proposals for presentations in our stream, whether solicited by us or contributed to the general CfP. This is essential not only to ensure that the quality of the program is high, but also to ensure that the TC6 stream is balanced and complete as a whole.
7. The main criterion for speakers is that they be able to present an authoritative summary and assessment of the state of the art in a particular area. This is an opportunity to present the most important new ideas in each of our technical areas to the large and diverse audience of the WCC, and also an opportunity to promote TC6. Getting well-respected, prominent speakers would help with both the "authoritative" aspect of the presentation and the "promote TC6" opportunity, but I don't expect to fill the stream with a dozen "famous people." An example of the basic idea for the stream is the series of annual State of the Art special issues that Telecommunications Magazine has produced since the mid-1990s (see for example http://www.telecoms-mag.com/marketing/articles/jan95/toc.html) - they recruit well-known people in six or eight areas to write short articles describing the most important/interesting/significant developments over the past year. These pieces are much more superficial than we expect for the TC6 stream at WCC, but they illustrate the basic idea.
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