Festivus

On Thursday June 9th, just prior to the banquet, we plan to have a Festivus (*) at ICAPS. This is a type of "open mike" event designed to allow participants to air controversial ideas and opinions about our field and where it is going. About 7-8 speakers will be given 5 minutes each to talk about what they think the field should be doing. The talk can be one of the following flavors:

  1. You are all doing the wrong research because...
  2. You should all be really be working on...
  3. If I see one more paper on XXX I am going to scream--because
  4. The "real" (TM) planning problems are...
  5. We are stuck in a rut and the way to get out is...
  6. The best thing that happened in planning is...
(others in a similar vein)

Each five minute slot will be followed by five minutes of questions from the floor.

Ideally these talks should be broad, thoughtful, yet funny critiques, that rock the boat and would keep people talking beyond the Festivus session into the banquet itself.

This event will be coordinated by Subbarao Kambhampati. The coordinator's role will be to (a) solicit participation from the community (b) select a subset (possibly in consultation with the PC chairs) and (c) ensure that the proceedings are lively and engaging.

Please note that we intend to balance the selected subset across dimensions of "old/young"; "theoretical/applied" etc. So, Ph.D. students with strong ideas about where the field should go are very welcome to apply for participation.

If you are interested in speaking, please send a note to rao@asu.edu by 20th May 2005, giving a brief (one paragraph) description of what you want to talk about. If you are selected, you will be notified by 30th May.


Footnote 1: According to Seinfeld, the main part of Festivus is the airing of grievances.

Footnote 2: An example of this type of session in the context of a database conference (look for "Gong Show").