How to PC

Important Steps

See below for expanded discussion of these steps.

1. Propose an extended list of PC members ASAP to the SC. (See details below.)
2. Decide the important dates and, if the PC meeting will not be virtual, a location for the PC meeting. (See details below.)
3. Agree with the SC on the list of proposed PC members and start contacting them to ask if they would like to serve on the CGO PC.
4. If you have decided on an in-person PC meeting, work with the GC to arrange a location for the PC meeting and PC dinner. Work with IEEE/ACM on contract. Ideally you are doing this in parallel to creating your PC list so that you can let potential PC members know in the invitation email.
5. Create the CFP and work with the publicity chair to start advertising once you know dates. (See details below.)
6. Prepare for submissions by setting up HotCRP and open the site. (See details below.)
7. Continuing advertising the CFP. Send out several reminders and intensify closer to the deadline.
8. Close the site, ask PC members to bid, and assign reviewers to the papers. As the rebuttal period gets closer keep reminding reviewers about the upcoming deadline.
9. Once most reviews are in, identify papers that will need external expert reviewers. One metric is that if a paper does not have either at least one PC review with the highest confidence or two PC reviews with the second-highest confidence, then an external expert may be required. Ask the PC for candidate experts and contact them as early as possible to request a review.
10. Assign discussion lead per paper (highest score / highest expertise). Encourage online discussion during the rebuttal period and before the PC meeting. The discussion leads should drive the online discussions as well. The PC chairs should overlook that each paper is actively discussed and send out reminders to the reviewers if necessary. Aim to reach consensus on as many papers as possible or to hone reviewers' discussion during this phase.
11. Hold the PC meeting and select the papers. Quickly notify the authors. Have a PC member for each paper add the feedback from the PC meeting to the review for the authors. Consider building the Distinguished Paper Award Committee at the end of the PC meeting. Consider inviting the Artifact Evaluation chairs to the PC meeting for quicker turnaround in starting the AE process for accepted papers.
12. Post the accepted papers on the website and inform the publisher and publications chair so they can begin to work with the authors on the proceedings. There may be conditionally accepted papers (particularly Tools papers, which generally are conditionally accepted until they pass Artifact Evaluation); consider waiting to post accepted papers until the conditional acceptances are finalized.
13. Build the committees for the Distinguished Paper Award (two papers) and the Test of Time Award (one paper from approximately 10 years ago give or take a couple of years) and make this selection. Avoid conflicts between the selected members and the authors of the nominated papers.
14. Invite a keynote speaker. There will be three keynote speakers to cover the topics of the three main co-located conferences (CGO, PPoPP, HPCA). Work with the SC and PC chairs of co-located conferences.
15. As the conference draws closer create a schedule and assign session chairs. Post the schedule on the CGO website.

Deciding on PC Members

• Typically the PC size is ~40 members.
• The PC should collectively have good coverage of expertise w.r.t. the CGO areas of interest. A good way to determine area of expertise coverage is to send a survey form with checkboxes for each area in the PC invitation and ask the candidate to fill in the form as part of replying yes.
• The PC should be diverse with a balanced presence: men/women, USA/Europe/Asia, industry/academia, junior/senior, newcomers/oldtimers.
• Most PC members must have already published at CGO. See Author Activity for a list.
• Attempt to find new faces for the PC who have not served on the CGO PC in the last 4 years. The official SIGPLAN recommendation is to have <10% of the PC members having served in the prior 4 years; for CGO with a smaller community this number is typically ~50% but we are trying to reduce it. Discuss a target percentage with the SC ahead of time.
• Start with the PC candidate lists from prior PC chairs (keeping in mind the last-4-years goal) along with the list of recent authors who are interesting in joining the PC. We recommend including a checkbox on the paper submission form asking whether any author is “interested in joining a future PC?” to aid in this for the next year.
• If the PC meeting is not virtual, each PC member must commit to a physical PC meeting.
• Consider asking each PC member in academia to volunteer a student to help with AE.

Deciding on Dates

1. Submission deadline: Always in September. See past deadlines. Try not to move it earlier or we take the risk loosing European submissions. Aim to place the submission deadline after ASPLOS notification and the notification date before the PLDI submission deadline. Consider coordinating the deadline with HPCA, PPoPP, CC.
   • Having a separate abstract deadline gives an initial indicator of how many submissions are expected. If the number is very different from prior estimates some action could be taken (try to expand the PC or find more external reviewers for a high count; possibly extend the final deadline for a low count).
   • Be aware of related conferences moving their submission times (e.g., ASPLOS moving to a multiple deadline per year model); this may affect CGO deadlines.
2. PC: Always October or November. See past deadlines. A few days before the notification is enough. Be careful not to conflict with another conference (e.g. PACT, MICRO). If possible try to co-locate.
3. Notification: Always October or November. See past deadlines. Must be before the PLDI deadline and must account for AE which takes time.

Location of the PC Meeting

Virtual meetings have worked well in the past, so an in-person meeting may not be necessary.

Virtues of a virtual meeting:

1. Easier to get commitments to serve on the PC (particularly for people with families/children, early researchers without lots of travel funds, etc).
2. Better for the environment.

Drawbacks of a virtual meeting:

1. Less engagement.

If a virtual meeting is decided upon:

• The past couple of times a virtual meeting was held, there were multiple meeting times to accommodate different time zones. This didn't work out very well, because the reviewers for a paper should not be segregated by geographic area---so papers usually had reviewers from various places and there wasn't a good way to divvy them up. Multiple meetings also made it harder to be consistent in deliberations. Consider only having one long meeting instead of multiple smaller meetings.

If a physical meeting is decided upon:

1. Must be easy to reach (east coast such as NYC convenient for Europeans; big airport such as Chicago/Detroit convenient for US). Sometimes hosted by a company; or hosted by a university; or in an airport hotel such as the Chicago O'Hare Hilton or Detroit Airport Marriott.
2. Several possible alternative ideas:
   • co-located with PACT or MICRO
   • two half days @2/3 locations in parallel
   • organise a short workshop with the PC members before/after
3. Make sure there is wifi for attendees and that it works.
4. Make sure the location of the PC meeting is easily accessible to all attendees.
5. The General Chair(s) and IEEE/ACM will need to be involved with any hotel contracts or financial matters.

Call for Papers (CFP)

• Update the previous call for papers (CFP) with the new dates for the abstract, submission and notification.
• Review the CFP to make sure there are not new topics that need to be added or old ones that need to be removed. Ask the SC to approve the CFP.
• Ensure the CFP includes a note allowing early publication prior to the conference:

AUTHORS TAKE NOTE: The official publication date is the date the proceedings are made available in the ACM Digital Library. This date may be up to two weeks prior to the first day of the conference. The official publication date may affect the deadline for any patent filings related to published work. For those rare conferences whose proceedings are published in the ACM Digital Library after the conference is over, the official publication date remains the first day of the conference.

• Send out the CFP even before the PC is built and update it later.
• In the CFP clearly state how artifacts will be handled.
• For the submission guidelines, note that CGO alternates yearly between ACM and IEEE templates.
• Advertise the CFP often. Email a pdf and text version to the PC and to your contacts at other institutions and ask them to help distribute. Use the CGO mailing list.
• Add the latest call to WikiCFP

Preparing for Submissions

• Work with the Web-chair or a student assistant to manage the HotCRP settings. Reuse the configuration files from previous year, but make sure the visibility is set right (last settings of the configs is to notify authors, so everything is visible to authors).
• Include a checkbox on the paper submission form asking whether the paper should be considered for the Tools or Practical Experience tracks.
• Include a checkbox on the paper submission form asking the authors' intention to submit an artifact (in order to ease the AE committee preparations).
• Include a checkbox on the paper submission form asking whether any author is “interested in joining a future PC?” and provide that list to the next year's PC chairs.
• Paste each PC member into a new account form (Settings | Accounts) on HotCRP (past email and rest are auto-filled) so PC names will be available to list as conflicts in the submission form.
• Decide if your times will be anywhere on earth (AoE) or some other time zone. Note this clearly so authors around the world are not confused by the deadline.
• In the early days of CGO it was tradition to offer a one week automatic extension to the submission deadline. This has not been the case for some time and it is uncommon to extend the deadline.

Running the PC Meeting

1. Before the PC meeting assign one discussion lead from the PC to each paper. Usually this would be someone who reviewed the paper.
2. CGO uses double blind reviewing and conflicted PC members should be asked to leave the room during the discussion.
3. It is common for PC members to want to table papers for later discussion when they cannot reach a consensus. Try to avoid this as much as possible and force the PC to make a decision. It is often harder later to pick up the discussion where it left off.
4. CGO traditionally does not shepherd papers. One or two may be acceptable but ensure the shepherds are assigned in the PC meeting and that authors know their paper has been "conditionally" accepted and what exactly is expected to be improved (new experiments, clarifications to text, missing references are common requests).

If the PC meeting is in-person:

1. Arrive early and check that the room is setup and ready. Does the projector work? How about the wifi?
2. Make sure there is coffee and tea throughout the day. Add several breaks into your schedule.
3. Be aware that some PC members might need to leave early to catch flights. Ask before the meeting and try to discuss papers that involve these PC members earlier in the schedule.

PC Dinner

1. It is traditional to hold a dinner after the PC meeting to thank the PC members for their efforts.
2. The budget needs to be agreed upon with the General Chair(s) and Finance Chair.
3. The PC chair(s) are responsible for finding the location, figuring out how to get all the PC members there and working with the GC to make arrangements to pay the bill. Often one of the PC chair(s) will end up paying for the dinner on their personal credit card. This is not desirable and it is not the responsibility of the PC chair(s) to lend money to IEEE and ACM. Make sure arrangements have been made by the GC to pay the bill.