CHI Conference format

This week, I'm at the CHI conference in Montreal. This is my third CHI conference, in addition to hhaving attended numerous other peer-reviewed/academic conferences. And I realized while sitting in some of the sessions where were lets just say not-so-interesting to put it mildly, that I would prefer a slightly (well, radically) different format for academic/perr-reviewed conferences.

Most major conferences now have multiple parallel tracks. CHI has 9 parallel tracks running concurrently with 5 different courses. So all in all, you can chose to be in one of 14 different places. The opportunity cost of missing some talks is high but unfortunately, since one doesn't know which ones are the ones worth listening to, it's ultimately an educated guess (some wouls call it more like a crap shoot, but it's not really all that bad).

By the time a paper is presented at a conference there is nothing a person in the audience can really say or do in order to change that in any way. Regardless of how critical the comments may be, the paper/poster has already been published and is hence been condemned to be around forever. Since the paper has already gone through a peer-review process, I am willing to trust the judgement (though some would question that, but bear with me for a minute) of the reviewers who accepted the paper to have verified the methodology and the details presented in the paper. Therefore, there is no reaosn for me to have to sit through a half hour (20 minutes presentation and 10 minute Q&A) on a paper. Instead all I really care about is what is the motivation/topic for the paper, what was built/tested/evaluated and what teh results were. 5 minutes at the most. The 5 minute presentation is sufficient to present a summary of the work. Anyone who is interested in the work, can read the paper and/or then meet with the presenter during his/her designated "discussion time" (no paper presentations should be on at the same time).

Back to the question of whether or not to trust the reviewers' judgements -- once the paper has already been accepted there is very little accountability in a public forum for the quality of the paper or the presentation. Therefore, rather than spend the time to listen to all the details, I prefer getting the executive summary and then having the opportunity to interact with the presenter in a special public Q&A session.

To that effect, I would also like to see some kind of accountability on the quality of the paper or presentation after the conference. Under the current system, while members of the audience can ask insightful questions, that interaction is not captured other than in the memories of others who were present and happened to be listening. It would be interesting to have members of the community post their critiques or questions in a public forum -- similar to comment son a blog entry. Along the same lines I would also be in favor of having the paper reviewers comments and the authors rebuttal available since the real value in research is not just what actually gets published, but in the back-and-forth that happens between the community.

So here is what I would propose:
1) No paper presentation to exceed 5 minutes, maybe even 3 minutes.
2) Single (or at least fewer) track paper presentations so that one can at least get a comprehensive overview of all the papers in the conference.
3) The paper, abstract, reviews and rebuttals posted on a website, which allows others to view them and comment on them.
4) A designated "discussion session" for the paper, which is more interactive. Those who wish to question the methods or results can read the paper and then come and participate in the discussion. Those who wish to just listen and absorb are welcome as well. A scribe should be present to capture the interaction of the discussion so that it too can be archived along with the paper.

These are of course thoughts in progress, but I'd be happy to discuss them with anyone who is interested.

The communication tables are turning

The birth of the Internet and of computer networks in general was fueled by the existence of the telephone network. The acoutic couplers and the modems became the way the masses got connected to a common network. However, that transformation is now long gone. The Internet has become ubiquitous. The driving need for people to communicate is what caused the formation of the PSTN network. The existence of the PSTN network fueled the growth of the data network. But now, this are going the other way. The PSTN network is slowly giving way and the data network is becoming more pervasive. In the early days, data rode on the voice network. Now, with the emergence of Skype and services like Vonage it is voice that is riding on data. My own company has developed a conferencing switch which is oblivious to whether the end-points connecting to it are traditional phone, bundled phone (T1) or IP. VoIP is finally here and it is here to stay.

Sad, Sad day for the US Supreme Court...

In my previous post, I talked about the latest Supreme Court ruling being a slippery slope. And I was afraid of what would happen if Bush got to choose another justice for the supreme court. Unfortunately, with Sandra Day O'Connor resigning that is what is going to happen. I heard Justice O'Connor at the commencement speech at Stanford last year and was very impressed. Sorry to see her leave and even more sorry at the realization that the current POTUS is probably going to choose yet another christian conservative to the open position in the Supreme Court.

The US Supreme Court...

Some of the recent ruling of the US Supreme Court are just so apalling to me. Take this one for instance from yesterday (June 23, 2005): The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday, in one of its most closely watched property rights cases in years, that fostering economic development is an appropriate use of the government's power of eminent domain.. That is just crazy. In a country that is supposedly built on the the foundations of freedom and the right of ownership, this really doesn't seem right to me.

EBay

Ebay has been the undisputed leader of all the survived the dot-com boom. It is a compnay that has single handedly changed the landscape of the marketplace for so many industries. In fact, I recently finished reading The Perfect Store: Inside EBay by Adam Cohen. It really was an interesting read and a valuable insight into Ebay's "community". In the book Cohen argues that Ebay's greatest asset is it's community. He also talks about Ebays "feedback system" or what is more generically known as a reputation system as a way for the Ebay community to self-police itself (for the most part at least).

Inspired by the book, I decided to give Ebay a new spin. And so recently I pulled out some old items which I wasn't using any more and mostly as an experiment proceeded to sell them on EBay. I also purchaed several items on Ebay and found some good deals and had an overall positive experience. However, in my non-scientific re-evaluation of Ebay, I also uncovered some peeves which I felt compelled to share:

1) Site Design and Usability: For a site that does so much in revenue, it is my personal opinion, that Ebay's site and usability leave a lot to be desired. I have actually heard talks from usablty folks at Ebay when they have come and presented at Stanford and they do a very good job of explaining why making changes to Ebay's interface has a very high switching cost for the company and for its community. The old dogs and the Ebay addicts have learnt how the site works and making any changes is akin to playing with fire, for fear of inflaming the community opinion or breaking the various screen-scrapers that are out there working trolling the ebay pages.

However, though that is formidable problem, I do feel that there are things that Ebay can do in order to make changes and yet potentially maintain backwar compatibility for a period of time and then phasing out old systems through a retirement program. A classic example that illustrates my point is EBay's Chat. I feel that given my background in the area I'm somewhat qualified to pick a fight on this. The technology that Ebay is using for it's chat system is so 1994-1995. There have been so many advances since then, but Ebay's system seems to be caught in its own little world where time stands still.

2) The interface for posting items for sale -- and the overall presentation of the items on the website can use a huge facelift. There is no reason that a seller should need to add a counter, or the fact that the counter should be a gif image -- again technology reminescent of a decade ago. The overall experience of posting an item for selling and that of actually browsing and biding can be improved so much by making little changes and most of all embracing new technology.

3) Auctions can get pretty fancy. But on Ebay, you cannot extend an auction into overtime. This is what encourages sniping. In my opinion sniping goes agaist the very fabric of the principles EBay's founders claimed to found the company on. If the objective is to create the most efficint marketplace, by allowing sniping (I'm not saying it should be stopped altogether, but that there should at least be the option for sellers to do an auto-extend on auctions till such time thre has been no more biding for a certain delta of time) then the market is not efficint any more. Some sellers are not getting the optimal value (and in fact it is so surprising that Ebay doesn't do this because it should imply a significant increase in the value of the transaction and hence and increae int he revenue for EBay) and som buyers are losing auctions because they weren't allowed to bid further even though they may be willing to do so.

4) My final and most crucial gripe is how EBay's feedback system is flawed and is prone to feedbac which is quid-pro-quo. I recently engaged in a transaction on EBay in which the seller did not ship the items in a timely manner. My attempts to contact the seller initially went unheard. I did eventually receive the product, but a couple of weeks late which in turn had an impact on the schedule I was attempting to meet for a research project. Consequntly, I made the decision to leave negative feedback for the seller, but with the appropriate comment that it was for poor communication and late shipment. The seller in return left negative feedback for me and thereafter, promptly submitting a request for mutual withdrawal. So by now the flaw should be aparent - If one side had a negative experience, but the other party upheld it's part of the bargain (in my case paying as soon as the auction ended) that feedback doesn't often come out in the system because both parties know that a negative feedback will probably result in a retaliatory negative feedback. This form of feedback-blackmail as I like to call it, results in a back-scratching quid-pro-quo which undermines the integrity of a reputation system. As I explained to the seller in my transaction, I will not succumb to such arm-twisting and withdrawing an honest and factual negativ feedback simply in response to a negative feedback would be a disservice to the EBay community.

What Ebay has going fo it is critical mass, however, if such little issues are not addresed over time (and a decade is a long time) then slowly the rust catches up with the tanker and it start to take on water...

Thoughts?