Technical Program

Technical Program • Committee selection • Committee strategy • Paper submission • Paper assignment • Paper reviewing • Committee meeting • Proceedings • Conference • Post conference

Acknowledgement • Attended postmortem for ICSE 1999 and ICSE 2000 • Sought (and received) much advice from previous chairs • Prior to selection of committee: Dave and Jeff • After selection---conference: Alex and Mehdi • Recommend (highly) history/record of activities to improve ICSEs, reduce duplicate effort, …

Committee Selection • Decide on composition of committees • Created three separate committees for papers: technical, education, case study • Decide on management of committees • Managed technical program; oversaw education and case-study committees, which were managed by other co-chairs

Committee Selection (cont’d) • Decide on strategy for selection of committee • First listed all areas we wanted to cover, and identified possible people in those areas • Talked to ICSE-2 to get recommendations for committee • Used the ICSE conference guidelines at http://www.icse-conferences.org/sc/guidelines: considered length of time, etc. • Considered membership in other committees (e.g., ISSTA, FSE) • Selected mix of junior/senior, academic/industry, nationalities, men/women, …

Committee Strategy • Determine guidelines/strategies for PC • Non appearance at PC meeting • Bidding strategy • Funding to attend PC meeting • Location of PC meeting • Etc • Make duties of committee clear in invitation • Send reminder of duties close to paper submission • Sent last reminder two weeks before paper due date • PC members can reconsider conflicts for attendance at PC meeting; if they cannot participate, PC chairs can invite new members if necessary before paper assignment

Paper Submission • Select electronic submission/reviewing system • Used Witan Web • Very pleased with system and support • Decide on submission strategy • Abstract first, then paper (2001); abstract, paper submitted together (2000); etc. • Decide whether abstract is required, and state in call and on web • Set firm deadlines (including time zone), and state in call and on web site

Paper Assignment • Bidding • completed before paper deadline • Assign papers • Assigned manually at week-long meeting • Mixed junior/senior reviewers on a paper • Assigned approximately same number/reviewer (18-22) • Considered balance for meeting discussion; considered strong/weak, language, etc. • Spent considerable time making assignments/checking, etc.

Paper Reviewing • Monitor reviewing, and respond to problems (e.g., no reviews submitted by PC member by due date) • Send reminders about reviewing deadline • Make sure that PC members record all information about outside reviewers that you plan to include in the proceedings (we asked only for names on the review forms, and spent quite a bit of time finding affiliations for the proceedings; there were many outside reviewers for the papers)

Committee Meeting • Decide on attendance strategy • Required all PC members to be at meeting, or listed as outside reviewer (clear in invitation guidelines and duties) • Determine paper order (modeled after ICSE 2000) • Papers to discuss; determined after reviews; scheduled papers with at least one A or two or more Bs; can discuss about 100 papers in two days (about 6 min/paper) • Paper order by constraints (e.g., all involved, no conflicts, mix of evaluations)

Committee Meeting (cont’d) • Create meeting strategy • Sent guidelines before meeting; explained guidelines at beginning of meeting; didn’t give much opportunity to discuss/change guidelines • Determine seating arrangement • Placement in room, to PC chairs, to each other • Determine management of meeting • Planned discussion order • Switched off during meeting, alternating responsibility for discussion between chairs • Used notes to communicate about discussion • Attempted to lead discussion to decision about paper

Committee Meeting (cont’d) • Arrange for meeting • PC members want power for laptops during meeting • Consider size/arrangement of room for meeting • Arrange for required AV equipment for meeting • Arrange for lunch, breaks, etc • Plan PC dinner • Select ICSE –10 paper • Send table of contents prior to meeting • Discuss and get recommendation at meeting

Committee Meeting (cont’d) • Create materials for meeting • Personalized booklets for each PC member, chairs • No evaluation numbers for conflicts; no review for conflicts; all other reviews for papers to be discussed • List of papers by discussion order • List of papers by numeric order • List of conflict papers • List of papers reviewed (discussed) • Copy of all submitted papers; copy of all reviews • Materials for PC members • Markers for booklets, name tags for PC members, … • Keep materials in meeting room; collect materials at end of meeting

Committee Meeting (cont’d) • Create program immediately following PC meeting • Held meeting immediately following PC meeting to finalize program • Hausi organized and ran meeting, which consisted of chairs of all conference committees

Proceedings • Done by IEEE with Anne Jacobs as proceedings editor • Collected papers from authors • Organized proceedings according to guidelines • Etc • Spent significant time proof reading; don’t assume that editor does this • Make arrangements for digital library (IEEE and ACM) • Decide what to include in proceedings (we included information about all tracks) • Decide who will take lead on particular tasks

Conference • Select session chairs • PC members who need to be session chairs; PC members who don’t have papers in the conference and want to be session chairs • PC members who reviewed the paper, work in the area, request a particular session • Plan for those who cancel late • Create guidelines for session chairs, presenters • Send periodically prior to conference • Make available on web site • Be prepared for many not reading them

Post Conference • Select papers for special issue/fast track • Get recommendations from PC • Select papers for resubmission, and consideration for a special issue of TSE

Technical Program