Sanjeev suggesting an interesting exercise, in our series on the design of a Theory Festival as part of STOC 2017: --------------- Throughout our conference design process  we often observe big shifts in people’s opinions as they engage with the issues and the mathematical constraints. So if you have strong opinions about the theory festival, I … Continue reading Do It Yourself Theoryfestival Design – Guest Post By Sanjeev Arora

Towards the business meeting, another personal post in our series (this one by Sanjeev Arora): -------------- An important part of the plan for theory festival ---which everybody involved agrees upon---is the need for a substantial plenary component. The festival organizing committee would select the plenary program based upon inputs from various sources. Plenary sessions will include about … Continue reading More fun at the theory festival: plenary sessions – guest post by Sanjeev Arora

[Yet another personal post in our series] STOC Festival Design: Improving interaction and fun factor; reducing information overload. Sanjeev Arora How can we increase the value added by a conference in today’s information-rich world, when papers have been available on arxiv for months to the experts in that area? These are some personal thoughts (ie … Continue reading STOC Festival Design: Improving interaction and fun factor; reducing information overload – guest post by Sanjeev Arora

[Boaz's note - this is another in the series of personal posts on STOC/FOCS reform, this time from Moshe Vardi, a renowned theoretical computer scientist who is also the editor in chief of the communications of the ACM. See also the discussion that's still going on in the comment section of Omer Reingold's post, as well … Continue reading Why Doesn’t ACM Have a SIG for Theoretical Computer Science? – Guest post by Moshe Vardi

This post represents my personal opinion (and only my opinion) with respect to turning STOC 2017 into a “Theory Festival.” FOCS and STOC is where the entire theory community is supposed to come together for the benefit of the fruitful exchange of ideas between sub-areas of theory (which as Boaz mentioned, has been one of … Continue reading Can We Get Serious?

This is a personal post, not representing the other members of our working group. While future discussion will naturally talk about (important) technical details such as amount of parallelism, scheduling of talks, number of days and length of breaks, I wanted to talk a bit about the broader vision. I hope other members will also … Continue reading Imagining a theory festival – a personal post

This blog post seeks to solicit input from the theoretical CS community on possible changes to STOC starting 2017. This planning was set in motion as a result of a long discussion session at FOCS 2014 (see these two earlier posts) when strong support was expressed for a longer “theory festival” that would include STOC but … Continue reading Turning STOC 2017 into a “Theory Festival”

As Boaz advertised, FOCS had a panel-led discussion on “How might FOCS and STOC evolve?” Here is a summary of that session by Sanjeev Arora: -------------------- This blog post is a report about a special 80 min session on the future shape of STOC/FOCS, organized by David Shmoys (IEEE TCMF Chair) and Paul Beame (ACM Sigact … Continue reading Sanjeev Arora: Potential changes to STOC/FOCS: report from special FOCS session

by Boaz Barak and Omer Reingold ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The debate about the future of FOCS/STOC has been long and heated. A wide range of criticism (containing at times contradicting complaints) was answered with one simple truth: FOCS/STOC have played and still plays an invaluable role for the TOC community. Indeed, the authors of this proposal have … Continue reading FOCS/STOC: Protect the Venue, Reform the Meeting