ITCS’2018
My friend Anna Karlin, who chairs the ITCS program committee this year, asked me to post the following announcement, and I’m happy to oblige her. I’ve enjoyed ITCS every time I’ve attended, and was even involved in the statement that led to ITCS’s creation, although I don’t take direct responsibility for the content of this ad. –SA
The ITCS 2018 Call For Papers is now available!
ITCS is a conference that stands apart from all others. For a decade now, it has been celebrating the vibrancy and unity of our field of Theoretical Computer Science. See this blog post for a detailed discussion of what makes ITCS so cool and the brief description of ITCS’17 at the end of this post.
ITCS seeks to promote research that carries a strong conceptual message (e.g., introducing a new concept, model or understanding, opening a new line of inquiry within traditional or interdisciplinary areas, introducing new mathematical techniques and methodologies, or new applications of known techniques). ITCS welcomes both conceptual and technical contributions whose contents will advance and inspire the greater theory community.
This year, ITCS will be held at MIT in Cambridge, MA from January 11-14, 2018.
The submission deadline is September 8, 2017, with notification of decisions by October 30, 2017.
Authors should strive to make their papers accessible not only to experts in their subarea, but also to the theory community at large. The committee will place a premium on writing that conveys clearly and in the simplest possible way what the paper is accomplishing.
Ten-page versions of accepted papers will be published in an electronic proceedings of the conference. However, the alternative of publishing a one page abstract with a link to a full PDF will also be available (to accommodate subsequent publication in journals that would not consider results that have been published in preliminary form in a conference proceedings).
You can find all the details in the official Call For Papers.
On last year’s ITCS (by the PC Chair Christos Papadimitriou)
This past ITCS (2017) was by all accounts the most successful ever. We had 170+ submissions and 61 papers, including 5 “invited papers”, and 90+ registrants, all new records. There was a voluntary poster session for authors to get a chance to go through more detail, and the famous Graduating Bits event, where the younger ones get their 5 minutes to show off their accomplishment and personality.
The spirit of the conference was invigorating, heartwarming, and great fun. I believe none of the twelve sessions had fewer than 70 attendees — no parallelism, of course — while the now famous last session was among the best attended and went one hour overtime due to the excitement of discussion (compare with the last large conference that you attended).
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Comment #1 July 7th, 2017 at 7:33 am
I have an off-topic question: Back when you posted The Power of the Digi-Comp II: My First Conscious Paperlet, I wrote in the comments a proof that DIGICOMP_EXP⊆CC·#L, and you responded saying you didn’t understand my proof. I believe my mathematical writing skills have improved since then and I would like to make another attempt to write the proof. The comments on that post are closed. Are you interested in seeing another write-up, and if so where do you want me to write it?
Comment #2 July 7th, 2017 at 4:32 pm
Hi Scott
Cant help, but make a couple of suggestions to the ITCS folks, which are based on my personal inexperience with the conference.
When ITCS was first announced (as ICS)
I was thrilled. Being a not very talented and shallow researcher a conference that stresses conceptual work seemed perfect. My first submission was a conceptual gem. There were three reviewers. One really loved the paper, the second didnt seem to have an opinion either way and the third essentially wrote that it is unpublishable junk. This brings me to my first suggestion. If you want to have some really innovative and wildly new ideas, leave some room for papers that only one of the reviewers really loved, or papers with huge variance in their scores, otherwise you will never explore outliers.
My second suggestion is to invite me as a keynote speaker next time. I have some very original and innovative work which shows interesting connections between very different fields. I will not be able to get it accepted, I tried earlier (badly written) versions the last two times and wasnt even close, but I am certain that people in the community will find it fascinating
Comment #3 July 8th, 2017 at 12:42 am
Itai #1: Sure, post a link to your proof here, or just email it to me.
Comment #4 July 8th, 2017 at 12:40 pm
Eitan #2: I’m not on the ITCS PC, so it’s not my choice to make. I can say that I’m always happy to hear your wacky talks. 🙂
Comment #5 July 8th, 2017 at 3:42 pm
Alright, I wrote the proof and posted it on my blog. Here it is.