Editorial: Running a conference program meeting in the 21st century

I am drafting this editorial from the second IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST 2009), where I am serving as the program co-chair. STVR has committed to publishing a special issue each year of the best papers published in this important new testing conference. Since this editorial was due during the conference, I decided to write about the conference management. In the 1990s, technical program committee (TPC) meetings were almost always in person, with a part of the TPC meeting for one or two days to choose papers to be accepted. In recent years, online TPC meetings have become more common. I have seen both versions conducted well, and I have also seen significant mistakes with both versions. Here I present some of my observations and thoughts on why this trend is occurring and how to run online TPC meetings well. The two models offer significant differences in terms of travel, duration and communication mode. In-person meetings require most people to fly and spend two or three days in a hotel. Online TPC meetings require no travel. In-person meetings usually last for one or two days; more time escalates the monetary and time costs beyond feasibility. Online TPC meetings usually last for two or three weeks. In-person meetings are synchronous, where every attendee is engaged in the discussion at the same time, faceto-face. Online TPC meetings are asynchronous, where messages are submitted and later read. These differences allow the relative advantages and disadvantages to be analyzed. In-person TPC meetings are incredibly expensive, both in terms of time and money. These costs were less important in the 1980s, when most TPCs were largely drawn from one continent. However, we now have truly global communities, and flying from my home in Virginia to a meeting in Hong Kong or from Tokyo to London is simply too expensive. My observation is that most in-person TPC meetings have 30% attendance or less. The short duration of an in-person meeting means that there is very little time to think during the discussion. The program chairs (PCs) must enforce deadlines of a few minutes per paper, so that every decision becomes rushed. There is very little time for extra reading of the paper, thoughtful reflection on the results or additional reviews to be requested. The result is that more weight is given to TPC members who (1) have lots of travel funds and (2) are more aggressive in a discussion. An in-person TPC meeting, on the other hand, requires little or no travel. Thus it saves money (as well as the environment). This increases participation; I have seen 90% or more of TPCmembers