Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!me!radio.astro!helios!root
From: root@helios.toronto.edu (Operator)
Newsgroups: comp.org.usenix
Subject: Re: suggestions for future conferences
Message-ID: <717@helios.toronto.edu>
Date: 16 Feb 89 22:02:53 GMT
References: <8902090223.AA01916@decwrl.dec.com> <1989Feb9.210123.19047@utzoo.uucp>
Reply-To: sysruth@helios.physics.utoronto.ca (Ruth Milner)
Organization: University of Toronto Physics/Astronomy/CITA
Lines: 51

In article <1989Feb9.210123.19047@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
>In article <8902090223.AA01916@decwrl.dec.com> devine@cookie.dec.com (Bob Devine) writes:
>>1. Multiple tracks for the main session.
>
>we'd have been happy to go to parallel tracks if there
>had been enough decent submissions.  There weren't; there were barely
>enough for a single track.

Why not open USENIX up for more than the very-specialised, very-advanced
topics that seem to make up the sessions now? I'm sure there are lots of
people out there, sysadmins for instance, who might have something
to say that would help make other people better informed about UNIX, but
who wouldn't dream of submitting a talk of a general nature or at a novice
level to USENIX. As an example of this, Andrew Hume mentioned that he gave
a session at a DECUS Symposium on grep and awk, and about 100 people, who
were genuinely interested, turned up. But he said he didn't even consider 
submitting something like that to USENIX because it wouldn't be accepted. 

Surely if the alternate tracks dealt with things from a different level and/or
a different perspective, you'd be less likely to get people complaining
about conflicts? In any case, having two or more streams (now there's an
appropriate term :-) ) can only let people get more out of the conference.
Maybe they can't go to two at once, but if there had only been one stream,
one session or the other, or both, might not have been offered. And in the
meantime a lot more people are probably able to find something to go to most,
if not all, of the time.

I understand that USENIX is a *technical* conference, and I like that, but
speaking as a first-time USENIX attendee at San Diego, there were an awful
lot of the sessions that held neither the faintest interest nor relevance for
me or for my work (and the room was never again as full as it was for the
keynote). Novice does not necessarily equal non-technical, and with UNIX 
moving into more areas where the people who have to work on/look after the 
computers know little or nothing about UNIX, more information is needed
on details which don't fall within the scope of, say, the tutorials on
BSD Internals (*please* don't schedule this parallel with SysV next time,
some of us have to use both) or System Administration. 

I don't intend this as criticism, just a suggestion that accepting more
general topics *as*well*as* the papers that you accept now might be beneficial
to everyone involved with USENIX, UNIX and other related things.

I apologise if this point of view has been aired already in this forum;
I haven't finished reading all the postings here (I'm still catching up on
mail and news that accumulated while I was at USENIX :-) ). It is a serious
suggestion; please accept it as such.
-- 
 Ruth Milner          UUCP - {uunet,pyramid}!utai!helios.physics!sysruth
 Systems Manager      BITNET - sysruth@utorphys
 U. of Toronto        INTERNET - sysruth@helios.physics.utoronto.ca
  Physics/Astronomy/CITA Computing Consortium