Letter To Toby Bloom

From cope Wed Jun 5 23:27:28 CDT 1996 To: tbloom@cmgi.com Subject: tips of the trade: first installment

Hi, Toby,

Well, again, highest congratulations. I can't think of anyone more deserving of the job -- you're perfect for it with your background, exposure, reputation -- and, most of all, your energy!

Choosing the committee can be fun. Freud said that we should make the important decisions of our life (marriage, career) from the gut instead of from reason, but that we should reserve reason for the more frivolous concerns. Along that dimension, the program committee constitution is a fun/frivolous decision, in the sense that you're unlikely to do any serious damage to the world as a function of your choices. I really don't know how one can go "wrong."

Here are some things I was told, and that I tried to follow, in choosing my committee. You can of course choose either to follow these or not follow these; there are no rules written in stone:

Make sure the Asian rim is well-represented. I worked hard to bring in quite a few Japanese folks, and had a couple turn me down. I turned to a few of my contacts there, and to former committee members, for pointers. I'm sure you can do the same, or I can pass some names on to you. We should probably start tapping Singapore and Hong Kong, too. And maybe Australia.
The 1997 ECOOP chair should sit on your committee; this is important, and worked well. Custom is that the ECOOP chair will invite you to sit on the 1997 ECOOP committee in return.
I think it's customary for the previous year's OOPSLA chair to sit on the committee. But I know this is yet another constraint, and you shouldn't feel compelled to honor it if you don't want to. I'll understand and will support you either way.
No more than one person from the same company (this ended up a disaster on my committee, after a few people moved companies and Digitalk and ParcPlace ended up merging... Well, you can't control everything). Dispensations in this area aren't unheard of; it sometimes makes sense.

Here are some things I was not told, but I did anyhow, and you can see if any of them fit your taste:

Strive for gender balance: I honestly believe it's important to have gender balance if you want effective group dynamics. I didn't get 50%/50%(was closer to 60%/40%) but I did make this a priority.
Have the OopslaExperienceReportsChair? on your committee. This really worked well, and I believe it was crucial.
Balance experience with new folks. I looked at old committees and found that they comprised mostly experienced folks. I was hoping for a 60%/40% split of experienced/new, and ended up with a dead even split. And I think it was fine.
Balance practitioners with academics. I actually looked at 4 categories: industrial practitioners, academics, researchers, and consultants. I ended up with 10 industrial folks, 6 academics, 5 researchers, and 3 consultants. I don't know what the ideal is, but I was personally happy with the mix and with the results.
Make sure the European community is fairly represented.
Make sure you don't load up the committee with all Smalltalk people, or all C++ people, or all CLU people... Things like this are obvious in retrospect, but it's good to audit them as you go along.
Keep the committee small. I think my committee was the smallest ever. Large committees have the advantage that you can spread the papers around more, and either generate more reviews or give each reviewer fewer papers. This year, I kind of wish we'd had more eyes looking at each paper before we got to the PC meeting, but we still did O.K. I think we couldn't have come to closure as easily with a much larger group, given how I run meetings. This will depend a lot on your preference and style; I've seen larger committees work, too.
I tended to choose people I knew had good interpersonal skills: "nice people." There were conscious exceptions (to keep the meeting from getting boring).

Things I wish I'd done:

Had the poster session chair on my committee.
Had one more database person on my committee.
Had more Scandanavians on my committee.

Mechanics:

I picked my committee by thinking of the 36 people in the world who I most admired and wanted to have on the committee, and then jumped around the list picking people to balance the other constraints. It worked marvelously. Only two people said "no." I'm sure other attacks work, too -- as with all the rest of this, there's a lot of room for creativity. I literally got down on my knees and begged one person -- it worked!

It took me about a month to get to the 90% point. I had JUST started picking my committee at OOPSLA. It would be nice to have them picked before the conference, so they can attend the attend the conference heads-up (particularly relevant for the first-timers).

Well, this is all off the top of my head. The most important rule is that there are no rules cast in stone. Make it your conference, with your personality, built around your theme. My theme for this year was to accentuate the human aspect of development, and that had a lot to do with the people I chose. You'll want to make your own mark on the conference and set its tone, and that's REALLY fun and satisfying!

If you REALLY want me to send you suggestions for committee members, I'd be happy to think about people and send you names. But I think it would be more fun and satisfying to draw on your own recollections and contacts first. Give it a try. Make it yours.

I'll bet Mary and Rebecca would have some good advice, too. It should be a real hoot working closely with Mary on this conference!

Best wishes,

-- cope