Wednesday, June 23, 2010

The Future of STOC

I set up a new blog, Future of STOC to discuss role of our main conference and how to achieve it.

At STOC this year we had a relatively large attendance of 350 but why not 1000 or more? Why isn't our flagship conference bringing the theoretical computer science community together?

A couple of months ago I wrote up a proposal to address these issues and circulated them to a number of people in our community. You can read the proposal and the responses on the blog. Based on those responses the SIGACT Executive Committee decided to slowly increase the maximum number of acceptances but also open up the discussion at the STOC business meeting, which we did. Many people at STOC asked me to post the proposal and the responses and open up the discussion to the broader community. That's the purpose of the new blog.

We want to hear from you, the theory community. Tell us if you love STOC the way it is. Or how can we change STOC to make it more relevant to you? Even if you would never plan to come to STOC, tell us why.

Go to the Future of STOC and join the conversation.