SOSP 2007 SHADOW PC

Rebecca Isaacs of Microsoft Research Cambridge is organizing a shadow program committee for SOSP 2007, under the sponsorship of EuroSys. If you are interested in participating, please apply by sending mail to sosp-shadowpc@sosp2007.org by February 25th.

FAQ

Q. What is a shadow PC?

A. The shadow PC is an educational experience. The shadow PC will write real reviews of the real submissions to SOSP 2007 in real time. At the PC meeting, following the normal discussions to choose a program, the shadow PC will hold a meta-discussion about the process with access to both their own reviews and those of the real PC (blind). This discussion covers how to write a systems paper, how to review one, and the dynamics of choosing a conference program.

Q. How is the shadow PC different to a real PC?

A. The shadow PC meeting will be held before the real PC meeeting, but the shadow PC results will not be made available to the real PC (with the exception of the PC members who attend the shadow meeting) until after the real PC has met. However, the shadow PC is run just like the real PC, in the sense that:

• Members will nominate the papers they would prefer to review based on the abstracts of all submitted papers.
• Members will be assigned roughly 15-20 papers for rigorous review, and will be expected to complete these reviews themselves.
• Members must attend a PC meeting in person in Cambridge, UK, on Tuesday June 12. As with any normal PC, members will have to ensure that they have the funding and the time to do this.
• The reviews will be sent to authors, clearly marked as reviews by the shadow PC.
• The shadow PC will be expected to uphold the same high standards of confidentiality and respect for the double-blind reviewing process as the real PC.

Q. Why participate in a shadow PC?

A. Being a member of a shadow PC is a lot of work without any recognition. But it is also very rewarding and worthwhile for a number of reasons, including:

• Getting to know how a PC is run and how it operates.
• Getting to see good quality papers as well as bad ones, and see how papers are viewed by others.
• Discovering what it takes to publish a paper in a highly selective conference such as SOSP.
• Having a chance to read top-notch papers in your area of expertise before they are published.
• Submitting high quality reviews makes one a possible candidate for future PCs.
• Discussing the papers with one or more SOSP PC members who will attend the shadow meeting.
• Getting to know other shadow PC members.

Qualifications

Each shadow PC member should have experience in terms of reading papers and have some foundation in his or her systems research area. He or she is ideally a post doc or recently appointed faculty member that has not yet been a member of PCs such as SOSP, OSDI, NSDI.

In order to choose a balanced PC, applicants must provide a short description of current research. Please include areas of expertise, and any publications would also be useful information (don't worry if you don't have any, its not a prerequisite).

Important dates

For more information about shadow PCs, please see Anja Feldmann's excellent report on the Sigcomm 2005 shadow PC published in CCR.

Interested in participating? Please email sosp-shadowpc@sosp2007.org with a brief description of your research interests by Sunday, February 25.

sosp-org@sosp2007.org