[PRL] Conference target of opportunity

shivers at ccs.neu.edu shivers at ccs.neu.edu
Sat Feb 3 11:13:09 EST 2007


This msg is especially intended for PRL students.

The TFP symposium is "Trends in Functional Programming." It is a friendly,
inclusive sort of conference, just right for someone who has a starter paper
they'd like to get out in front of people. The way it works is that just about
*anything* that isn't completely awful that is submitted is accepted to the
conference. (Rather like the Scheme workshop.) Everybody gets to make a
presentation, basically. After the conference, the PC makes a second pass and
selects a subset of the papers to be invited for submission to a proceedings.
If you wish, you can alternately decide to upgrade the paper and send it
somewhere else. Let me say that again: if you've got a piece of work and you'd
like to get some feedback on it, then sending it to TFP *doesn't* "use up" the
paper -- you can send it in, get your reviews, go present the paper, get some
feedback, and then tune it up, turn around and send it to ICFP or PLDI.

So here are the nice properties of TFP for a student:

- It's a "symposium," so looks better on a c.v. than a workshop. 

- It's in NY this year, instead of Europe, so it's cheap to travel. 

- The CFP is pretty broad-spectrum wrt style of paper:
  Research Articles 	Leading-edge, previously unpublished research work
  Position Articles 	On what new trends should or should not be
  Project Articles 	Descriptions of recently started new projects
  Evaluation Articles What lessons can be drawn from a finished project
  Overview Articles 	Summarizing work with respect to a trendy subject

- No proceedings, so you can upgrade the paper & send it somewhere else.

- The PC is really high quality for such a workshop-like sort of venue:

    John Clements	California Polytechnic State University, USA
    Marko van Eekelen	Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, The Netherlands
    Benjamin Goldberg	New York University, USA
    Kevin Hammond	University of St. Andrews, UK
    Patricia Johann	Rutgers University, USA
    Hans-Wolfgang Loidl	Ludwig-Maximilians Universität, Germany
    Rita Loogen	Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany
    Greg Michaelson	Heriot-Watt University, UK
    Marco T. Morazán (Chair)	Seton Hall University, USA
    Henrik Nilsson	University of Nottingham, UK
    Chris Okasaki	United States Military Academy at West Point, USA
    Rex Page		University of Oklahoma, USA
    Ricardo Peña	Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain
    Benjamin C. Pierce	University of Pennsylvania, USA
    John Reppyq		University of Chicago, USA
    Ulrik P. Schultz	University of Southern Denmark, Denmark
    Clara Segura	Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain
    Jocelyn Sérot	Université Blaise Pascal, France
    Zhong Shao		Yale University, USA
    Olin Shivers	Northeastern University, USA
    Phil Trinder	Heriot-Watt University, UK
    David Walker	Princeton University, USA

In short: a *fine* place for a starter student to ship a starter paper, or
for a little oddball project. PRL should exploit it.

Now, the *bad* news is that the submission deadline was 2/1. But the *good*
news is that, in keeping with the friendly, inclusive nature of TFP, the
committee is mulling the possibility of accepting a few more late papers.
I can lobby for this, and I know the PC chairman is open to it. The chairman
has also noted that this year there are *no* submissions from the Scheme
community (and there have been some excellent submissions from fairly
excellent people in other FP communities).

So... if you have a paper you now realise you'd like to submit, and you think
you can get it together by, say, Mon/Tue, send me mail ASAP and I'll push the
chairman, and I'll bet he'll take it.
    -Olin



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