Re: CFPs, conference announcements

Re: CFPs, conference announcements

[Robert Dewar]

Bob Crispen says

"I don't know if this is possible, but it sure would save me some time
in reading INFO-ADA if we could either (a) prohibit full-length
conference announcements and the like, or (b) post them in special
issues of the INFO-ADA digest.  I'd even settle for a guarantee that
the announcement was the last thing in the digest so I could tell
where to stop reading (and no, you can't tell that from the TOC).

Stop reading?  You bet.  Anyone whose funding permits attendance at more
than one of ten of the conferences whose bloated announcements show up
here has my profound admiration.  And an announcement 1000 lines long
about a conference I can't attend that I have to scroll past to get to
some technical information is scarcely a welcome gift in my mailbox.

Nowadays isn't it really an abuse of the net to post these enormous
announcements and CFPs on USENET and on listservs, now that the Web is
here?  And do the organizers really want to give a first impression
that their conference is kind of low-tech?"

I strongly disagree. The full length announcements are fine. What is
not fine is the idiotic software you are using that requires you to
scroll through them. Any news reader has the capability of instantly
deleting articles. If the digesting process and the software used
to read these digests is decrepit, then that's unfortunate, and by
all means should be fixed. 

It is not at all an abuse of the net to post these full announcements.
With reasonable software it is trivial to bypass them, and there are a
lot of people who have newsgroup access and do not have acceptable
Web access. Indeed for me, anything less than a T1 line makes the
Web totally useless!

If you have Web access, why on earth aren't you reading CLA with a
decent news reader, instead of using the INFO-ADA digest?

CFPs, conference announcements

[Bob Crispen]

I don't know if this is possible, but it sure would save me some time
in reading INFO-ADA if we could either (a) prohibit full-length
conference announcements and the like, or (b) post them in special
issues of the INFO-ADA digest.  I'd even settle for a guarantee that
the announcement was the last thing in the digest so I could tell
where to stop reading (and no, you can't tell that from the TOC).

Stop reading?  You bet.  Anyone whose funding permits attendance at more
than one of ten of the conferences whose bloated announcements show up
here has my profound admiration.  And an announcement 1000 lines long
about a conference I can't attend that I have to scroll past to get to
some technical information is scarcely a welcome gift in my mailbox.

Nowadays isn't it really an abuse of the net to post these enormous
announcements and CFPs on USENET and on listservs, now that the Web is
here?  And do the organizers really want to give a first impression
that their conference is kind of low-tech?

VRML '95, for example, was very well attended, and never posted
anything beyond a paragraph or two that pointed to the website where
all the info resided (including registration via HTML form instead of
those silly-looking typewritten ruled lines in USENET postings).

I do appreciate the amount of volunteer work that goes into conferences,
and the desire to get the word out to as many people as possible, but
can't we be a little more up-to-date about it?

Bob Crispen
revbob@eight-ball.hv.boeing.com
Speaking for myself, not my company

Re: CFPs, conference announcements

[Bob Crispen]

Robert Dewar <dewar@CS.NYU.EDU> sez:

>I strongly disagree. The full length announcements are fine. What is
>not fine is the idiotic software you are using that requires you to
>scroll through them.

Amen!  Although actually the idiocy may have been mine for subscribing
to the digest while using a mail program that doesn't break out the
innards of digests.

>If you have Web access, why on earth aren't you reading CLA with a
>decent news reader, instead of using the INFO-ADA digest?

Uh, because our news feed is iffy at best and our ability to respond
through the firewall is even iffier?  At least INFO-ADA digest delivers
postings that make it through the vicissitudes of USENET to a higher
probability site than ours.

Anyhow, I note with interest that the very next conference announcement
that appeared on c.l.a was short and had an URL in it where you could go
for more information.  Were I a complete chucklehead, I'd put that down
to my benificent influence on the net.  Alas, I'm not up to that level
of boneheadedness today.

But it's evidence that at least one other person agrees that it's
getting on toward the time when conference schedules, registration and
so on can and ought to be conduced on the Web instead of USENET.

No biggie, and definitely off-topic.  Lacking any response from the
hard-working and ill-appreciated souls who manage INFO-ADA, I'll
probably drop it and try my luck with USENET.

Bob Crispen
revbob@eight-ball.hv.boeing.com

Re: CFPs, conference announcements

[Simon Johnston]

> Bob Crispen says
>
> "I don't know if this is possible, but it sure would save me some time
  [snip]
> that their conference is kind of low-tech?"
>
> I strongly disagree. The full length announcements are fine. What is
> not fine is the idiotic software you are using that requires you to
> scroll through them. Any news reader has the capability of instantly
> deleting articles. If the digesting process and the software used
> to read these digests is decrepit, then that's unfortunate, and by
> all means should be fixed.
>

See if your mail reader has a reg-exp search and try ^From:[ \t]+ which
should skip you to the next mail.

>

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