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Paolo Perrone (Jul 01 2020 at 20:43):Hello all! This is the thread of discussion for the ACT Business Meeting.
Date and time: Thursday July 9, 17:15 UTC.
Zoom meeting: https://mit.zoom.us/j/7055345747
YouTube live stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om4Rbst1lDI&list=PLCOXjXDLt3pZDHGYOIqtg1m1lLOURjl1Q
Paolo Perrone (Jul 03 2020 at 14:38):If you have any suggestions for (additional) topics that we should address in this session, future directions where the ACT community should go, and so on...this is the place!
Jules Hedges (Jul 03 2020 at 16:15):The Topos institute has a slot in the industry session
John Baez (Jul 03 2020 at 17:08):It may be best to ask David and Brendan questions about the Topos Institute after their talk. By the way, I'm part of this institute and I don't know a lot of details yet. However, regarding outreach, they are planning to employ Eugenia Cheng.
John Baez (Jul 03 2020 at 17:13):Also by the way: I'll be chairing the meeting, and if anyone has topics to suggest please do it here. If we have time we can get into the Topos Institute, but mainly I think we'll be talking about the ACT conference series. The next one will be at Cambridge University, run by Jamie Vicary.
Fabrizio Genovese (Jul 04 2020 at 00:32):There are a lot of things I'm not satisfied with when it comes to ACT right now. But I spoke extensively with David Spivak about this so I guess he'll relay my observations...
John Baez (Jul 04 2020 at 01:03):Okay. I think the "business meeting" is mainly about the ACT conference series, not the general state of applied category theory. But whatever: we can start with the former and when we're done with that we can switch to the latter, which is an endless subject.
John Baez (Jul 04 2020 at 01:08):The topics I know we should talk about are:
planning next year's meeting in Cambridge - I should get Jamie Vicary to start with a report on that.
conference proceedings: we've had a lot of debate over where to publish them (we settled on Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science for the 2019 and 2020 proceedings), and also whether the quality bar for proceedings papers should be higher than that for non-proceedings-track papers. The second question still may have some life to it.
John Baez (Jul 04 2020 at 06:35):I think so. I imagine I'll be doing some of this, but I don't know.
John Baez (Jul 04 2020 at 14:47):Rongmin wrote:
I think it's important that if ACT is really going to be "applied", then we need to engage people outside of pure mathematics with educational programs.
Definitely. I think one reason the Topos Institute will be near Silicon Valley is that they want to have classes on category theory for programmers. (I wouldn't be teaching those since I don't know enough about programming.)
John Baez (Jul 04 2020 at 15:02):They probably want to get some more substantial involvement with the software community in Silicon Valley, but I think they can make some money with classes or workshops.
David Michael Roberts (Jul 04 2020 at 15:57):I mean, if Bartosz M can sell a book on it, there's scope for teaching people what monads really are ;-)
John Baez (Jul 04 2020 at 16:14):Yes, there should be a good customer base for courses on that sort of stuff, and I'd be very unsurprised if Bartosz gets involved in teaching these courses, given that he and Brendan and David are writing a book Programming with Categories.
Fabrizio Genovese (Jul 04 2020 at 19:00):We do ACT courses with statebox, they are consistently fully booked, and the majority of people taking part are programmers
Fabrizio Genovese (Jul 04 2020 at 19:00):so yes, there's definitely interest
Paolo Perrone (Jul 09 2020 at 17:05):10 minutes!
Fabrizio Genovese (Jul 09 2020 at 17:06):Suggestion: Make it pass protected and put the pass here + email it as Eliana suggested
Brendan Fong (Jul 09 2020 at 17:14):working on it!
Brendan Fong (Jul 09 2020 at 17:17):the business meeting is here:
Brendan Fong is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: ACT Business meeting
Time: Jul 9, 2020 10:30 AM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
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Stelios Tsampas (Jul 09 2020 at 18:17):As a TCS/CT guy, I'm worried about the perception of ACT in the eyes of people from the TCS community and this meeting did little to erase my doubts. I fear that TCS people will be unwilling to submit to ACT unless the work is very raw.
Stelios Tsampas (Jul 09 2020 at 18:19):At the same time, I don't have a clear picture of how many of us are involved in this community.
Mike Shulman (Jul 09 2020 at 18:20):@Stelios Tsampas Can you elaborate on that? How exactly are you worried that TCS folks will perceive ACT and why?
Mike Shulman (Jul 09 2020 at 18:21):One of my concerns on the mathematics side is that if ACT "publishes" lots of "work in progress" that most mathematicians wouldn't consider worthy of "publication" at all, then mathematicians will come to view it as a low-quality venue. Is that the sort of thing you mean?
Georgios Bakirtzis (Jul 09 2020 at 18:22):I also want to note that I saw several people asking about acceptance rates, which is often misconstrued in CS as measuring the "quality" of the conference. There are several ways you can deflate or game that number lets not introduce bad ideas and quick metrics into ACT
Stelios Tsampas (Jul 09 2020 at 18:23):Mike Shulman said:
One of my concerns on the mathematics side is that if ACT "publishes" lots of "work in progress" that most mathematicians wouldn't consider worthy of "publication" at all, then mathematicians will come to view it as a low-quality venue. Is that the sort of thing you mean?
I have a feeling that that was the implicit assumption made by mathematicians (also mentioned by @John Baez ), that conferences are inherently about WiP and they provide mostly an opportunity to present exciting work and socialize.
Georgios Bakirtzis (Jul 09 2020 at 18:23):I don't know where this came from. CS people don't publish "work in progress" in top CS conferences.
Stelios Tsampas (Jul 09 2020 at 18:24):@Giorgos Bakirtzis For better or worse (I'm leaning on the latter), that's how (T)CS works I'm afraid...
Stelios Tsampas (Jul 09 2020 at 18:25):From my understanding, the introduction of the proceedings in ACT serves both as a way to legitimize the conference and also "reach out" to CS people.
Georgios Bakirtzis (Jul 09 2020 at 18:25):If there is work in progress, its specified in the title and is a much shorter paper usually and presented as a different track with 1 min fast talks
Georgios Bakirtzis (Jul 09 2020 at 18:26):I think if that's the intention then it's more important to set the same standard as CS/engineering conferences, which state that the paper must be 70% original in order to be in the proceedings not an accompany to a journal publication but condensed
Stelios Tsampas (Jul 09 2020 at 18:26):At the same time, proceedings are puzzling the mathematicians from the community, while dually TCS people want to know that the proceedings adhere to the standards (hence the three TCS people who were asking on rates).
Mike Shulman (Jul 09 2020 at 18:27):Giorgos Bakirtzis said:
CS people don't publish "work in progress" in top CS conferences.
What about "non-top" conferences?
Georgios Bakirtzis (Jul 09 2020 at 18:27):I don't know, work in progress either goes in the main conference as a separate track with different rules or in workshops and symposiums
James Fairbanks (Jul 09 2020 at 18:28):I had a conflict and could not attend this meeting, but I think we need to have two tracks. One that represents mathematical work that is ready for presentation, but not necessarily journal quality, and one for peer reviewed CS publications that are treated to the same level of rigor as journal articles, but page limited to 8-12 pages.
Stelios Tsampas (Jul 09 2020 at 18:28):In the end, if ACT really wants to have proceedings, the issue is quantitative, not qualitative: how high will the bar be settled? How low? If it is to low, yet it has proceedings, some TCS people will not only consider this as a conference not worth submitting to, but it will paint accepted works implicitly as lower quality, eventually harming the researchers. It's a tight situation.
Toby Smithe (Jul 09 2020 at 18:28):I think it's important to point out that ACT is, at least from my perspective, trying to be much broader than either CT applied to CS (or to other subjects in mathematics), and that it is probably important that the conference remains accessible to such 'outsiders' (as Xavier put it).
This isn't to say that the level of "quality" should be somehow lowered, but that the way the conference presents itself remains welcoming to researchers who are not familiar with traditions either in TCS or mathematics.
Mike Shulman (Jul 09 2020 at 18:29):One does see work in progress at mathematics conferences, but I think it's most often of the "almost complete" or "all but arXived" sort, and at least as as often the talks are about papers that have already been submitted to journals or even already published.
Stelios Tsampas (Jul 09 2020 at 18:29):Mike Shulman said:
Giorgos Bakirtzis said:
CS people don't publish "work in progress" in top CS conferences.
What about "non-top" conferences?
Absolutely, no problem. But like I said, the problem is quantitative. A sweet spot of standards has to be found.
Georgios Bakirtzis (Jul 09 2020 at 18:29):What is quantitative about this problem, I don't see anything like that
Stelios Tsampas (Jul 09 2020 at 18:30):Exactly where the bar will be set.
Georgios Bakirtzis (Jul 09 2020 at 18:30):A conference is good if the papers and presentations are good/interesting not if it hits a magic number in publications
James Fairbanks (Jul 09 2020 at 18:30):yes, definitely scientists and mathematicians won't get "tenure points" for work presented at ACT and so should not be held to the standards of a full journal article, but CS researchers won't get "tenure points" from talks that aren't subjected to rigorous review to the same standards of a journal. Since we want to include all three communities, we need to have two tracks.
Georgios Bakirtzis (Jul 09 2020 at 18:30):But what is quantitative about that bar?
John Baez (Jul 09 2020 at 18:30):I'm sure there is a line that you would draw somewhere as well? Would you, say, let an engineer from Marlboro speak? A logistics manager from Blackwater (now Academi)?
I was trying to get people to express their opinions, not express them myself. (Maybe everyone misunderstood my questions as expressions of opinion.)
I don't know what I would do. I sort of like the idea of letting everyone speak but having a forum where people can express their opinions about these issues. This might be too "flammable" to be practical - but if someone from Marlboro speaks and then gets to hear what everyone thinks about that company, that could be more useful than simply banning them.
John Baez (Jul 09 2020 at 18:31):Stelios Tsampas said:
Mike Shulman said:
One of my concerns on the mathematics side is that if ACT "publishes" lots of "work in progress" that most mathematicians wouldn't consider worthy of "publication" at all, then mathematicians will come to view it as a low-quality venue. Is that the sort of thing you mean?
I have a feeling that that was the implicit assumption made by mathematicians (also mentioned by John Baez ), that conferences are inherently about WiP and they provide mostly an opportunity to present exciting work and socialize.
I don't think mathematicians mainly talk about work in progress at conferences. I usually talk about papers I've written.
Stelios Tsampas (Jul 09 2020 at 18:32):@John Baez You did mention however that journals are the go-to place for high quality work (according to mathematicians), not conferences.
John Baez (Jul 09 2020 at 18:33):Mathematicians don't usually publish conference proceedings!
Georgios Bakirtzis (Jul 09 2020 at 18:33):Who are these people
James Fairbanks (Jul 09 2020 at 18:33):I think that an extended abstract for the math/science track and a full 8-12 pager for the CS track would accommodate both communities well. CS conferences often have workshops which receive papers that are adjudicated by the extended abstract standard and granted talks, these workshop papers are worth fewer tenure points.
Stelios Tsampas (Jul 09 2020 at 18:33):John Baez said:
Mathematicians don't usually publish conference proceedings!
Exactly, but ACT wants to have those ;).
John Baez (Jul 09 2020 at 18:33):I clarified my remark.
Tobias Fritz (Jul 09 2020 at 18:34):At the risk of opening a can of worms: what are the to advantages of proceedings at all, other than that that's the CS tradition?
If you want to distribute work in progress, then you can still give a talk even with a non-proceedings submission. You can also put a work-in-progress manuscript on your website or even on the arXiv for people to read. Is there a need to also have work in progress peer reviewed? I don't see why, since presumably you're still going to get a final product peer-reviewed anyway.
Georgios Bakirtzis (Jul 09 2020 at 18:34):It makes me increasingly nervous when we start forming policies based on "points" we think or not think count for tenure, at least for this conference (I don't necessarily disagree but I see a danger)
John Baez (Jul 09 2020 at 18:35):Stelios Tsampas said:
John Baez said:
Mathematicians don't usually publish conference proceedings!
Exactly, but ACT wants to have those ;).
I know. I was explaining to Giorgios why I said mathematicians read journals rather than conference proceedings. Journals are the main place mathematicians publish their work, esp. if it's high-quality. We don't get promotions based on conference proceedings - those are discounted.
Georgios Bakirtzis (Jul 09 2020 at 18:35):Advisors and grants will not pay for me to go to any conference without a publication
Mike Shulman (Jul 09 2020 at 18:35):James Fairbanks said:
yes, definitely scientists and mathematicians won't get "tenure points" for work presented at ACT and so should not be held to the standards of a full journal article, but CS researchers won't get "tenure points" from talks that aren't subjected to rigorous review to the same standards of a journal. Since we want to include all three communities, we need to have two tracks.
And what happens when a mathematician submits to the "proceedings track", either because they are confused or just feel like it or have a CS coauthor who needs the tenure points, and they end up with a "publication" that they should not be getting tenure points for?
James Fairbanks (Jul 09 2020 at 18:35):I think the only reason for establishing proceedings is to accommodate the existing incentive structure of CS research.
Toby Smithe (Jul 09 2020 at 18:35):Are there practical problems with the ACT structure today? I'm not sure what this debate is really about. I can see two main practical problems that have been raised: 1) a lack of diversity; and 2) Fabrizio's difficulties with "applied applied" or "tools" or "engineering" research.
Stelios Tsampas (Jul 09 2020 at 18:35):James Fairbanks said:
I think the only reason for establishing proceedings is to accommodate the existing incentive structure of CS research.
Exactly my thoughts (look above).
James Fairbanks (Jul 09 2020 at 18:36):if they write an original 8-12 page manuscript that meets the standards of the proceedings track, you publish it. if it is an abstract for a talk, you reroute it to the talks only track.
Jules Hedges (Jul 09 2020 at 18:37):In a sense it is irrelevant whether the proceedings model is good or bad. The proceedings model exists and some cs departments will only pay expenses if you have a paper accepted. It is necessary to fit around that
James Fairbanks (Jul 09 2020 at 18:37):right
John Baez (Jul 09 2020 at 18:37):The issue is that we are trying to make a conference attractive to 2 or more communities with different procedures and norms.
Stelios Tsampas (Jul 09 2020 at 18:37):Stelios Tsampas said:
James Fairbanks said:
I think the only reason for establishing proceedings is to accommodate the existing incentive structure of CS research.
Exactly my thoughts (look above).
But I'm afraid that this entails adhering to some standards, and I'm sure if the where the bar is set in ACT is high enough for CS people. If indeed it isn't, CS people might not be willing to submit here.
Stelios Tsampas (Jul 09 2020 at 18:37):Exactly @John Baez !
Mike Shulman (Jul 09 2020 at 18:37):Toby Smithe said:
Are there practical problems with the ACT structure today? I'm not sure what this debate is really about. I can see two main practical problems that have been raised: 1) a lack of diversity; and 2) Fabrizio's difficulties with "applied applied" or "tools" or "engineering" research.
Well, I think part of what's driving the debate behind the scenes is that there were some specific disagreements among the PC this year regarding some submissions, related to the quality bar and expectations for the two tracks.
Toby Smithe (Jul 09 2020 at 18:38):Aha. As far as I can tell, ACT is a new conference, and the main thing should be to establish it as a place where people want to come to talk about interesting (and, dare I say it, high-quality) work. Is it failing at that aim?
James Fairbanks (Jul 09 2020 at 18:38):well you have to bootstrap the bar and the prestige together. If we manage the conference correctly, the bar goes up every year and the prestige also goes up because we are in a virtuous cycle
Stelios Tsampas (Jul 09 2020 at 18:38):Mike Shulman said:
Toby Smithe said:
Are there practical problems with the ACT structure today? I'm not sure what this debate is really about. I can see two main practical problems that have been raised: 1) a lack of diversity; and 2) Fabrizio's difficulties with "applied applied" or "tools" or "engineering" research.
Well, I think part of what's driving the debate behind the scenes is that there were some specific disagreements among the PC this year regarding some submissions, related to the quality bar and expectations for the two tracks.
I also noticed two notable TCS professors trying to raise the issue in the chat earlier. It is a tangible problem.
Georgios Bakirtzis (Jul 09 2020 at 18:39):Stelios what is that quality bar
Georgios Bakirtzis (Jul 09 2020 at 18:39):you want acceptance rates lower than 15%?
James Fairbanks (Jul 09 2020 at 18:39):the quality bar is the fact that some papers get rejected because they aren't good enough
Georgios Bakirtzis (Jul 09 2020 at 18:39):I am honestly asking
James Fairbanks (Jul 09 2020 at 18:39):you don't have to put a number on it to have a bar.
Georgios Bakirtzis (Jul 09 2020 at 18:40):Yes I know and I agree quality should be high for some metric of quality based on the introduction of the paper and its relevance to the conference but that is not what Stelios is talking about
Stelios Tsampas (Jul 09 2020 at 18:40):@Giorgos Bakirtzis The implicit standards set by the committee during review. And I do not know the exact number.
John Baez (Jul 09 2020 at 18:41):Toby Smithe said:
Aha. As far as I can tell, ACT is a new conference, and the main thing should be to establish it as a place where people want to come to talk about interesting (and, dare I say it, high-quality) work. Is it failing at that aim?
The contentious issue involves the clash of cultures between math and CS, and the difficulty in effectively making both communities happy.
John Baez (Jul 09 2020 at 18:41):I don't think anything is "failing".
Georgios Bakirtzis (Jul 09 2020 at 18:41):Can we add engineering to that?
John Baez (Jul 09 2020 at 18:41):Yes, that just hasn't been the main thing people have been arguing about yet!
Georgios Bakirtzis (Jul 09 2020 at 18:42):I am arguing for it
John Baez (Jul 09 2020 at 18:42):Right. That's one.
James Fairbanks (Jul 09 2020 at 18:42):Yeah I would put
Stelios Tsampas (Jul 09 2020 at 18:42):The rate does not have to be 15%. For math-heavy , abstract TCS conferences like LICS or FoSSaCS, the rate is much higher than that (around 40%).
John Baez (Jul 09 2020 at 18:42):I'm just trying to explain the general flavor of the battles to Toby, who seems not to have attended them.
James Fairbanks (Jul 09 2020 at 18:43):like math and science give talks about work submitted to journals and they are adjudicated based on abstracts. and CS and Eng will write papers for the proceedings that will be adjudicates as if they were short journal articles.
Georgios Bakirtzis (Jul 09 2020 at 18:45):Here is a call for papers from a 'top' engineering conference
Toby Smithe (Jul 09 2020 at 18:46):Right. And I'm trying to suggest that perhaps ACT, which seems to be seeing itself as a community, should make some decisions that best suit its own aims, rather than try to please people who see themselves as theoretical computer scientists or mathematicians primarily. It seems totally OK to me for different groups to have different expectations, as long as people are clear about how things work.
Georgios Bakirtzis (Jul 09 2020 at 18:46):Main ingredients, different tracks, some end up in the proceedings of the main conference, some in a supplementary volume indicated clearly as such and some don't http://acc2021.a2c2.org/sites/acc21/files/documents/call-docs/ACC2021_CFP_v2-kam-kb.pdf
Georgios Bakirtzis (Jul 09 2020 at 18:46):Keynote speakers are decided by the PC
Georgios Bakirtzis (Jul 09 2020 at 18:47):and there are a couple of Best paper awards, either for the full conference OR for those that have a student first author (indicated by Best Student Paper Award)
Georgios Bakirtzis (Jul 09 2020 at 18:47):This is a conference that brings A LOT of areas together as you can see by the second paragraph, studying how they do it might not be bad
Georgios Bakirtzis (Jul 09 2020 at 18:48):And controls is a good example because it does have the theory people and the application people
James Fairbanks (Jul 09 2020 at 18:49):I think that SIAM also does a good job of blending its interdisciplinary community and accommodating their needs. It mixes math, applied math, scientific computing, computer science, and engineering and finds a way to blend the communities. In fact, making a SIAM activity group for ACT would be a good long term goal.
Stelios Tsampas (Jul 09 2020 at 18:50):For instance, at some point @Tarmo Uustalu raised the question as to whether or not the committe can downgrade a contribution to appear only as a talk, instead of accepting is a proceedings paper (even if the researcher went for the proceedings track).
Lemme also mention something that sort of raised a red flag: the possibility of having conjectures (for the main theorem) in proceedings paper. Now, some conjectures are more interesting than others, or more obvious than others, but in general you don't expect to see many conjectures (in main theorems) in LICS etc.
Mike Shulman (Jul 09 2020 at 18:51):Toby Smithe said:
as long as people are clear about how things work.
As I said in the meeting, this is the hard part, because the "people" who have to be clear about how things work are not just the people submitting to ACT and the PC evaluating those submissions, but the faculty in math, CS, and engineering departments evaluating tenure and promotion CVs that include talks/publications at ACT. We can't invent a totally new culture and instantly make everyone in academia aware of how it works, when even after decades mathematicians and computer scientists still can't understand each other's systems.
John Baez (Jul 09 2020 at 18:52):Toby Smithe said:
Right. And I'm trying to suggest that perhaps ACT, which seems to be seeing itself as a community, should make some decisions that best suit its own aims, rather than try to please people who see themselves as theoretical computer scientists or mathematicians primarily. It seems totally OK to me for different groups to have different expectations, as long as people are clear about how things work.
The probem is that there are not yet "departments of ACT" that promote people based on standards we get to set, or "ACT grants" that fund people to attend conferences based on standards we get to set. Currently people can only succeed in their careers if they meet standards set by math departments, computer science departments, engineering departments, industry, etc. So, for ACT to thrive, we need to take into account the demands of these diverse communities.
John Baez (Jul 09 2020 at 18:53):After we take over the world, we'll have more power. :upside_down:
James Fairbanks (Jul 09 2020 at 18:53):Yeah this is very similar to how SIAM operates, there are relatively few departments of "industrial and applied mathematics" so you have to live in one of the component departments. They operate journals, math conferences, and engineering/computer science style conferences.
Toby Smithe (Jul 09 2020 at 18:55):Right. And the problem is the "diverse" bit. It seems impossible to resolve that! And if that's the case (that is, if "after decades mathematicians and computer scientists still can't understand each other"), what hope do we have? And then, if not very much, why not just decide what works best for ACT? Perhaps by looking at what went well and what went not-so-well. Which is simply why I was wondering if there were concrete problems -- such as those raised by Valeria or Fabrizio -- and how to fix those. Not these fairly nebulous "problems" about "quality" or "acceptance rates". I think they will sort themselves out; we should have faith in ACT as a community, if we do want it to be a scholarly community.
James Fairbanks (Jul 09 2020 at 18:55):Yeah I also have that faith.
Toby Smithe (Jul 09 2020 at 18:55):(And again, that's not to say I think there should be no "bar" for quality. Just that it shouldn't be decided based on keeping certain subgroups happy, because that way doesn't really seem possible from what I've seen and heard and read so far.)
Georgios Bakirtzis (Jul 09 2020 at 18:56):I don't think that should be a parenthetical for what it's worth :)
Toby Smithe (Jul 09 2020 at 18:58):Questions like: how can we get underrepresented groups to present, or how not to gate-keep engineers. How to get the PC to evaluate quality diversely. Perhaps: have the PC drawn from lots of communities -- people who know how to evaluate accordingly. But not to set the rules for ACT as a whole to bias any particular group. I suspect that is already how it is set up, or at least that is already the intention.
James Fairbanks (Jul 09 2020 at 18:58):I think that two tracks are the only way to go, until Math&Science accepts conference proceedings as valid scholarly contributions or CS&Eng adopts the journal article as primary unit of scholarly work.
Toby Smithe (Jul 09 2020 at 18:59):Jamie suggested that the idea this year was that the proceedings / non-proceedings choice was available, and so you could choose to fit what suited your "background community".
James Fairbanks (Jul 09 2020 at 18:59):yeah we should do that again, and just make sure that the different expectations are clearly communicated to the PC.
Stelios Tsampas (Jul 09 2020 at 19:04):If the same two-track approach will be used for 2020 (assuming the same intentions as before) then yes, clear communication is necessary as well as an honest discussion w.r.t. what goes in the proceedings, that will sort of set the tone of the conference. This discussion was not made in the business meeting, albeit due to obvious constraints.
James Fairbanks (Jul 09 2020 at 19:10):For example, my team submitted an abstract with the expectation that it would be adjudicated as a talk, because we did not have the time to produce at the level expected for a solid CS-style conference paper.
We received a favorable review that included the line:
... but it is impossible to tell from this 3-page abstract how much work is needed in order to glue the pieces together...
This reviewer recommended acceptance, but I think that this comment was based on expecting to see the full details which would have been presented in an 8-12 page paper. My assumption is that the PC discussion would clarify any misunderstandings about the standards and that is the proper role of the chair and other leaders within the PC.
I don't think there is a crisis here and that as long as we make clear what should go in each track, we should be good to go. Also I am happy to volunteer as a PC member for next year (and the next few years if you'll keep me!)
Stelios Tsampas (Jul 09 2020 at 19:14):@James Fairbanks If the committee believes that the proceedings track works as intended and it adequately accommodates the diverse groups that the conference appeals to (say, simplistically, mathematicians and (T)CS-people), ita est :).
James Fairbanks (Jul 09 2020 at 19:17):Yeah I don't think that the two tracks are precluding the kinds of diversity we want. I wasn't on the PC so I don't know. I think we need to do more to recruit submissions diversely in the sense of DE&I and in the sense of interdisciplinary scholars. But I don't think that the two track setup is a problem on those fronts.
Stelios Tsampas (Jul 09 2020 at 19:19):But if the standards for the proceedings is not "adequately" high to so that the proceedings are meaningful (so that they serve their intention), I would argue that it's better without them. And I'm not sure if the DE&I issue should affect the proceedings...
James Fairbanks (Jul 09 2020 at 19:20):Has a PC chair for next year been picked yet?
John Baez (Jul 09 2020 at 19:20):I think all we know is that Jamie Vicary is the local organizer of ACT2021. So I think the answer to that is "no".
James Fairbanks (Jul 09 2020 at 19:23):Stelios, I think that you have to bootstrap the standards and the prestige, as we get better submissions year over year, we can have higher standards and having better papers promotes prestige. Anything that would be worth hearing about that isn't above the quality bar set by the PC can be rerouted to a poster or talk without the accompanying proceedings paper. There is no shame in that, the author can choose to accept/reject the rerouting and they can revise and submit next year / somewhere else.
Stelios Tsampas (Jul 09 2020 at 19:25):@James Fairbanks I absolutely agree with that :).
John Baez (Jul 09 2020 at 19:26):Bob Coecke has a lot to say about this "bootstrapping" process because he's been trying to make that happen in the QPL series.
Stelios Tsampas (Jul 09 2020 at 19:27):The particular issue of rerouting was raised by a TCS person in the chat, right? And I'm pretty sure that's what they wanted to hear. It is one of the many ambiguities which were not answered during the meeting.
Fabrizio Genovese (Jul 09 2020 at 19:28):Stelios Tsampas said:
The rate does not have to be 15%. For math-heavy , abstract TCS conferences like LICS or FoSSaCS, the rate is much higher than that (around 40%).
If the goal is having ACT to be like LiCS please state it clearly so I can walk away without feeling even a little bit guilty
Fabrizio Genovese (Jul 09 2020 at 19:30):James Fairbanks said:
Stelios, I think that you have to bootstrap the standards and the prestige, as we get better submissions year over year, we can have higher standards and having better papers promotes prestige. Anything that would be worth hearing about that isn't above the quality bar set by the PC can be rerouted to a poster or talk without the accompanying proceedings paper. There is no shame in that, the author can choose to accept/reject the rerouting and they can revise and submit next year / somewhere else.
I think that this whole idea of "bootstrapping the prestige of a conference" is really the wrong way to look at it. I want a conference to be inclusive, not exlusive. I want people that are new to ACT and maybe do not know precisely how it works, but have suggestive ideas, to be able to be part of it.
John Baez (Jul 09 2020 at 19:30):Anything that would be worth hearing about that isn't above the quality bar set by the PC can be rerouted to a poster or talk without the accompanying proceedings paper.
I believe that "rerouting" occurred, but I don't think that was made clear in the announcements sent out about ACT2020. It's probably good to let everyone know ahead of time what game they are playing. We just haven't been quite organized enough yet to know all the rules ahead of time.
Fabrizio Genovese (Jul 09 2020 at 19:31):My whole Statebox experience is based on this. I, a theoretician, speaking with hackers. We do not get along 100% well, but this created a sharing of ideas that allowed us to build something new and exciting. As soon as you start talking about prestige etc you are setting some standard that de facto entrench you in the kind of stuff you already do.
Fabrizio Genovese (Jul 09 2020 at 19:32):And then there you have it, the usual super boring conference where the same ideas are recirculated over and over, and people submit there just to get brownie points for tenure track
John Baez (Jul 09 2020 at 19:32):Fabrizio wrote:
I think that this whole idea of "bootstrapping the prestige of a conference" is really the wrong way to look at it. I want a conference to be inclusive, not exclusive. I want people that are new to ACT and maybe do not know precisely how it works, but have suggestive ideas, to be able to be part of it.
I think this is something where people may disagree. As long as there's just one ACT conference it does not make sense for it to be too exclusive. I think however that we were starting at a prestige level of zero (since ACT did not exist before 2018), and wanting it to increase to "above zero" is reasonable.
Fabrizio Genovese (Jul 09 2020 at 19:32):For what I care, as soon as a conference reaches that stage it's basically dead
Fabrizio Genovese (Jul 09 2020 at 19:33):John Baez said:
Fabrizio wrote:
I think that this whole idea of "bootstrapping the prestige of a conference" is really the wrong way to look at it. I want a conference to be inclusive, not exclusive. I want people that are new to ACT and maybe do not know precisely how it works, but have suggestive ideas, to be able to be part of it.
I think this is something where people may disagree. As long as there's just one ACT conference it does not make sense for it to be too exclusive. I think however that we were starting at a prestige level of zero (since ACT did not exist before 2018), and wanting it to increase to "above zero" is reasonable.
I agree, but there is a great difference between going from "no one cares" to "somebody think this is legit" and programmatically plan to raise the bar year after year
John Baez (Jul 09 2020 at 19:33):Yup.
John Baez (Jul 09 2020 at 19:34):I think things will change a lot when there get to be two ACT conferences.
Fabrizio Genovese (Jul 09 2020 at 19:34):Also, I think that 100% of the people here agree that the whole metric system to decide who gets a tenure track and who doesn't is totally pointless if not harmful. Again, if we agree on this I don't see why we really have to insist on playing that sort of game ourselves at our conference
Fabrizio Genovese (Jul 09 2020 at 19:35):I think the sweet spot is having a bar that is high enough so that departments will give phd students money to travel and attend. Less than that it's harmful, more than that is useless.
Blake Pollard (Jul 09 2020 at 19:36):Perhaps it is not independent of the structure of the submissions pipeline, but I'm interested in a more pointed effort at soliciting submissions from people who don't already identify as ACT people. There are people out there who feel that their work is "too applied" to be of interest to this community.
James Fairbanks (Jul 09 2020 at 19:36):Someone should host a meeting about that at NIST
Blake Pollard (Jul 09 2020 at 19:36):haha yeeeee
Blake Pollard (Jul 09 2020 at 19:37):I guess my vision for AACT was a bit along these two conference lines, but also meant to be more of a workshop than conference.
John Baez (Jul 09 2020 at 19:37):Try to make up a better name for it, one that doesn't start fights.
John Baez (Jul 09 2020 at 19:37):(I know that wasn't your serious name for it...)
John Baez (Jul 09 2020 at 19:38):Maybe some title that doesn't have "T" in it. I'm sick of how "category" always comes with the word "theory" after it. Nobody says "chemistry theory" or even "differential equation theory".
Fabrizio Genovese (Jul 09 2020 at 19:38):The first healthy thing we could do is asking more engineers to be part of the reviewers
Aleksandar Makelov (Jul 09 2020 at 19:38):btw i am quite new here (basically cold-submitted (is this a phrase?) and got into the poster session), and I like @Fabrizio Genovese's point, but also I wonder what the acceptance rate was just for my personal sake (as in, this would be useful information to me at this point in time), not for evaluating the quality of the conference in any way. ok this is awkward and i won't bring it up again, people can pm me if they want
Blake Pollard (Jul 09 2020 at 19:38):haha, indeed definitely not my intention to start fights, but i was somewhat serious about the name.
John Baez (Jul 09 2020 at 19:39):I think that name would start fights.
Georgios Bakirtzis (Jul 09 2020 at 19:39):Hmmm interesting what would a name for using categorical structures be without "category theory"
Fabrizio Genovese (Jul 09 2020 at 19:40):Another thing that I believe would help 1000% is to esplicitly state that if reviewers don't feel comfortable in reviewing something, they should state it clearly. ACT is a very broad subject so this can actually be the case more often than in other research fields. Typical example: Paper that is theory + code. If you don't know how to code, you should state very clearly that "I really cannot evaluate the results pertaining to code", and vice-versa
John Baez (Jul 09 2020 at 19:40):If you say "AACT" a bunch of people will interpret that as saying "ACT isn't really applied". Which may be true, but I don't think that's the goal - I think that's just where we are right now.
John Baez (Jul 09 2020 at 19:40):Something like "Categories in engineering", or "Categorical system design" - there are all sorts of imaginable fun titles for conferences!
Blake Pollard (Jul 09 2020 at 19:41):Renaming category theory a long time ago might have helped.
John Baez (Jul 09 2020 at 19:41):Anything containing the words "applied theory" is a bit lame imho.
Blake Pollard (Jul 09 2020 at 19:41):I hear you. The joke about the contradictory nature of ACT only goes so far.
John Baez (Jul 09 2020 at 19:42):"Applied category theory" is mainly a good name for its shock value - it makes people say "huh, what's that"?
Fabrizio Genovese (Jul 09 2020 at 19:42):Fabrizio Genovese said:
Another thing that I believe would help 1000% is to esplicitly state that if reviewers don't feel comfortable in reviewing something, they should state it clearly. ACT is a very broad subject so this can actually be the case more often than in other research fields. Typical example: Paper that is theory + code. If you don't know how to code, you should state very clearly that "I really cannot evaluate the results pertaining to code", and vice-versa
All in all, I think we have to be aware that we are asking our reviewers to step out of their comfort zone quite a lot. It would be nice if the reviewing directives would acknowledge this, and implement possible solutions :slight_smile:
Georgios Bakirtzis (Jul 09 2020 at 19:43):Hmm people still say control theory or APplied control-theoretic approaches to
Blake Pollard (Jul 09 2020 at 19:44):I've been kind of looking at the network science community as a good parallel example. They are super interdisciplinary and have grown wildly since I went to NetSci 2012 or something and talked about Quantropy.
Blake Pollard (Jul 09 2020 at 19:45):They are more united around a set of computational tools, and we are heading in that direction, but it is somehow less primary.
James Wood (Jul 09 2020 at 19:50):John Baez said:
As long as there's just one ACT conference it does not make sense for it to be too exclusive. I think however that we were starting at a prestige level of zero (since ACT did not exist before 2018), and wanting it to increase to "above zero" is reasonable.
I kinda saw SyCo as the second applied category theory conference, even if it's not a conference as such.
Stelios Tsampas (Jul 09 2020 at 19:51):Fabrizio Genovese said:
Stelios Tsampas said:
The rate does not have to be 15%. For math-heavy , abstract TCS conferences like LICS or FoSSaCS, the rate is much higher than that (around 40%).
If the goal is having ACT to be like LiCS please state it clearly so I can walk away without feeling even a little bit guilty
Hahaha I'm with you Fab :). But again, the whole discussion is driven by the fact that, at least partially, proceedings were introduced to appeal to the TCS crowd. Standards, rates etc. are (sadly) part of the equation. Imho if you decide to play a certain card (proceedings), you have to play it (implement it) correctly. Otherwise you shouldn't play it.
Georgios Bakirtzis (Jul 09 2020 at 19:52):Stelio I see where you are coming from but I just disagree I guess.
Stelios Tsampas (Jul 09 2020 at 19:53):Giorgos Bakirtzis said:
Stelio I see where you are coming from but I just disagree I guess.
No worries man :). But do you disagree on my perceived intentions or the above position? Because I really don't want to turn ACT into LICS :joy:.
Georgios Bakirtzis (Jul 09 2020 at 19:54):I guess I have seen way to many respected and good scholars reduce their work to papers accepted at /conference name/ with 15% acceptance
Georgios Bakirtzis (Jul 09 2020 at 19:55):It's toxic and I personally would like to stay away from those metrics as far as possible but I don't represent the full community
Georgios Bakirtzis (Jul 09 2020 at 19:55):(or probably even a small part of it :P)
Toby Smithe (Jul 09 2020 at 19:55):I think many of us feel like that, and that we should avoid toxic practices generally.
Georgios Bakirtzis (Jul 09 2020 at 19:56):I'll gladly accept practices that encourage work like Best paper and Best presentation awards
Georgios Bakirtzis (Jul 09 2020 at 19:56):And those seem to mean something even when the conference is not necessarily known
Stelios Tsampas (Jul 09 2020 at 19:57):I would be very happy if we can go partizan and follow our own way when it comes to proceedings. I would gladly welcome a more inclusive and open proceedings track that promotes original work without the common toxic pitfalls of other academic fields. By we should be very open and transparent with this.
Paolo Perrone (Jul 09 2020 at 19:57):To all the people in here: ACT is starting soon again, at THIS link: https://mit.zoom.us/j/7488874897
Georgios Bakirtzis (Jul 09 2020 at 19:58):I mean I would gladly support a statement in the ACT website about how acceptance rates will not be provided because we don't find value in them.
Stelios Tsampas (Jul 09 2020 at 19:59):So, me personally, I would be happy with such proceedings. But from what I saw in the chat earlier and from my own experience, I know some people will not be happy or willing to submit to ACT.
Georgios Bakirtzis (Jul 09 2020 at 19:59):You can never make everybody happy
Toby Smithe (Jul 09 2020 at 20:00):If people would be so precious, I would rather leave them behind...
Stelios Tsampas (Jul 09 2020 at 20:00):No no, you absolutely can't.
John Baez (Jul 09 2020 at 20:06):James Wood said:
John Baez said:
As long as there's just one ACT conference it does not make sense for it to be too exclusive. I think however that we were starting at a prestige level of zero (since ACT did not exist before 2018), and wanting it to increase to "above zero" is reasonable.
I kinda saw SyCo as the second applied category theory conference, even if it's not a conference as such.
Good point! I just forgot. I think it's supposed to be a good venue for talking about work in progress.
Jules Hedges (Jul 09 2020 at 20:08):John Baez said:
If you say "AACT" a bunch of people will interpret that as saying "ACT isn't really applied". Which may be true, but I don't think that's the goal - I think that's just where we are right now.
For what it's worth, I don't think "AACT" (or whatever you call it) would hold together as a subject, after the initial workshop. At ACT we meet at our common denominator which is categories, but the further you push into applications the less people will have in common. I think it's natural that the more applied side splits into several sub-communities
John Baez (Jul 09 2020 at 20:09):Jules Hedges said:
For what it's worth, I don't think "AACT" (or whatever you call it) would hold together as a subject, after the initial workshop. At ACT we meet at our common denominator which is categories, but the further you push into applications the less people will have in common. I think it's natural that the more applied side splits into several sub-communities
Agreed. Maybe broad ones at first like "categories in engineering" or "categories in chemistry", but probably more and more specialized if the subject takes off.
Jules Hedges (Jul 09 2020 at 20:10):In fact the idea of categorical cybernetics is to be as broad as possible while still more narrow than ACT and still coherent as a subfield
Blake Pollard (Jul 09 2020 at 20:15):Yea, systems or systems engineering definitely has emerged as a (still fairly broad) sub-community of ACT and cybernetics is a cool even broader umbrella.
Blake Pollard (Jul 09 2020 at 20:19):But you don't want to squash the interdisciplinary aspects of ACT. Aside from the categories, that's the best part!
John Baez (Jul 09 2020 at 20:21):Cybernetics is pretty damned interdisciplinary, luckily. But eventually we can dream of a community of, say, "categorical chemists" who speak so much jargon they can only talk to each other. :slight_smile: That's how academic communities tend to evolve, and it's not all bad.
John Baez (Jul 09 2020 at 20:21):But we're nowhere near that point, and I'm not eager to hasten the fragmentation.
Tarmo Uustalu (Jul 10 2020 at 08:45):Reading this with interest as a TCS person and one of those that asked questions in the chat yesterday. For me, quality for proceedings papers is only about whether as a reader I can trust that this conference's PC has done a reasonable job vetting the papers for technical soundness, clarity of exposition, novelty (perhaps not super novel but credit given to other people where it is due). It is not about acceptance rate.
A conference does not have to have 15% acceptance rate to be prestigious. It just has to be credible.
While talks are a performance for a moment, papers (in formal proceedings) are there for eternity. There's too much noise in the internet anyway. We waste a lot of time separating noise from signal when reading stuff. It's good to know, when approaching a formally published paper,that it is quality stamped. Else there is no difference between authors' preprints and proceedings papers.
Tarmo Uustalu (Jul 10 2020 at 08:46):In TCS we have prestigious conferences (in TCS-B, where category theory related stuff sorts) with acceptance rates of 15% (ICALP-B), 30-40% (LICS, FoSSaCS), 80-90% (MFPS, CALCO). We do trust these conferences and the papers that appear there.
Tarmo Uustalu (Jul 10 2020 at 08:52):To aim for some particular low acceptance rate as a conference organization is extremely silly. Or as an author to only submit to conferences that have these low acceptance rates. I know some people do this (in my narrower area it is more prevalent among people based in the US) but I totally disagree with this attitude.
I just want to hang out at conferences where I know the PC has done a proper job selecting an interesting program, has made sure that the papers that are published in the proceedings are reliable as sources of scientific knowledge for the readers, where I know that the participants (in general) are genuinely interested in what they themselves and their peers are doing - rather than playing some endless prestige game where you are never satisfied with the "fame" you already earned.
Stelios Tsampas (Jul 10 2020 at 09:13):Thank you for speaking up on the matter @Tarmo Uustalu. The last paragraph sums it up very well and I believe that a well-coordinated and diverse committee can go a long way in maintaining some standards while keeping the conference accessible and open.
Jules Hedges (Jul 10 2020 at 09:32):Controversial opinion incoming: I believe that if there is ever a conflicting choice between quality and supporting the community, ACT-the-conference should choose to support the community. This will not necessarily happen. But it may be that there is a lot of perceived higher quality work on the purer side, and some perceived lower quality work on the more applied side. (It may be that this is already the case.) In this situation my controversial opinion is that the role of ACT should be to shape the direction of the community by giving space to the more applied things at the expense of purer things.