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From: David Arnold <davida@pobox.com>
To: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>
Cc: TUHS main list <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] How to Kill a Technical Conference (was: Zombified SCO comes back from the dead, brings trial back to life against IBM)
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 08:26:30 +1000	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <56470B32-2F79-4ADC-AC9C-D59F85009309@pobox.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <YGsZEMRXlqr+/q6y@mit.edu>

> On 6 Apr 2021, at 00:05, Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu> wrote:
> 
> A lot of the conflicts were over the writing style.  There many ways
> you can write papers.  For example: 
> 
>   (a) academic papers suitable for tenure-track publications
>   (b) technical industry paper meant for other industry practitioners
>   (c) white papers written by and for sales/marketing folks

One reason you don’t get more of (b) at USENIX these days is that the value to writer is basically nil.

Compare writing a USENIX conference paper with crafting a decent blog post: the latter gets immediate distribution, a flurry of comments and feedback from peers, and can often kick off new software projects, define new industry-wide nomenclature, to say nothing of the career benefits of building your professional “brand”.  All the things a paper *used* to do, when people attended conferences and read papers as a means of information exchange.  

The pre-publication peer review process, and the annual (or longer) cadence means it’s just not the right venue for a fast-moving field, for the majority of topics.  Sometimes, it makes sense to turn a successful blog post into a paper, to get some formal recognition, or to explore an idea more rigorously, but most of the time, things have moved on by then, and for an industrial worker (vs. academic), there’s very little incentive: you’re much better off getting another high-profile blog post than working through and writing up a paper.

It’d be great to see USENIX rejoin this conversation as an essential forum, but it’s hard to see how: disintermediation has done its thing.




d


  reply	other threads:[~2021-04-05 22:33 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 86+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2021-04-01 14:50 [TUHS] Zombified SCO comes back from the dead, brings trial back to life against IBM Josh Good
2021-04-01 15:12 ` Warner Losh
2021-04-01 15:27   ` Josh Good
2021-04-01 15:33     ` Larry McVoy
2021-04-01 16:14       ` Kevin Bowling
2021-04-01 16:26         ` John Cowan
2021-04-01 17:54       ` Thomas Paulsen
2021-04-01 16:27     ` Nemo Nusquam
2021-04-02  2:16     ` Kevin Bowling
2021-04-02  3:52   ` Wesley Parish
2021-04-02  5:26     ` Kevin Bowling
2021-04-02 16:03     ` Clem Cole
2021-04-02 16:11       ` Larry McVoy
2021-04-02 16:39       ` Heinz Lycklama
2021-04-02 17:14         ` Clem Cole
2021-04-02 17:17       ` [TUHS] AIX repeat [was " Charles H Sauer
2021-04-03  1:24       ` [TUHS] " Wesley Parish
2021-04-04  2:46     ` Adam Thornton
2021-04-04  2:50       ` Adam Thornton
2021-04-04  5:29         ` [TUHS] How to Kill a Technical Conference (was: Zombified SCO comes back from the dead, brings trial back to life against IBM) G. Branden Robinson
2021-04-04 18:22           ` Clem Cole
2021-04-04 20:54             ` Richard Salz
2021-04-04 21:11             ` Clem Cole
2021-04-05  0:36             ` John Cowan
2021-04-05  2:19               ` Warner Losh
2021-04-05 18:07                 ` [TUHS] How to Kill a Technical Conference John Gilmore
2021-04-05 19:30                   ` Clem Cole
2021-04-05 20:34                     ` Richard Salz
2021-04-05 20:42                       ` William Cheswick
2021-04-06  4:37                       ` Ed Bradford
2021-04-05 20:39                     ` Larry McVoy
2021-04-05 21:11                       ` Theodore Ts'o
2021-04-05 21:17                         ` Dan Cross
2021-04-06 15:39                     ` Theodore Ts'o
2021-04-06  5:49                   ` Dave Horsfall
2021-04-05  7:48               ` [TUHS] Whither Usenix [was How To Kill A Technical Conference] arnold
2021-04-05 14:05             ` [TUHS] How to Kill a Technical Conference (was: Zombified SCO comes back from the dead, brings trial back to life against IBM) Theodore Ts'o
2021-04-05 22:26               ` David Arnold [this message]
2021-04-04 23:30           ` A. P. Garcia
2021-04-04  3:41       ` [TUHS] Zombified SCO comes back from the dead, brings trial back to life against IBM Gregg Levine
2021-04-04  3:57         ` Adam Thornton
2021-04-02  5:41 ` David Arnold
2021-04-02  6:09   ` Steve Nickolas
2021-04-02  7:00     ` arnold
2021-04-02  9:53       ` Steve Nickolas
2021-04-02 10:26         ` arnold
2021-04-02 14:02           ` Josh Good
2021-04-02 14:17             ` Steve Nickolas
2021-04-02 15:16               ` Larry McVoy
2021-04-02 15:28                 ` Fabio Scotoni
2021-04-03  1:50                 ` Dave Horsfall
2021-04-03  1:55                   ` Warner Losh
2021-04-03  2:23                   ` Larry McVoy
2021-04-03  2:34                     ` Earl Baugh
2021-04-03  6:16                   ` Dan Stromberg
2021-04-04 16:18                     ` Tony Finch
2021-04-04  1:48                   ` David Arnold
2021-04-04  2:23                     ` Larry McVoy
2021-04-04  8:55                       ` Josh Good
2021-04-04 14:43                         ` Michael Parson
2021-04-04 15:36                         ` Warner Losh
2021-04-04 16:15                           ` Clem Cole
2021-04-04 22:25                             ` David Arnold
2021-04-04 22:55                               ` Clem Cole
2021-04-05  2:30                                 ` Dave Horsfall
2021-04-04 23:00                               ` Bakul Shah
2021-04-04 23:33                                 ` Clem Cole
2021-04-05  1:34                                   ` Bakul Shah
2021-04-05  2:58                                     ` Kenneth Goodwin
2021-04-05 12:35                                       ` John Cowan
2021-04-05 20:44                                   ` Kevin Bowling
2021-04-04 23:34                               ` Josh Good
2021-04-04 20:08                         ` Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM)
2021-04-04 21:00                           ` Jon Steinhart
2021-04-04 21:40                             ` Clem Cole
2021-04-04 21:54                               ` Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM)
2021-04-04 22:02                                 ` Jon Steinhart
2021-04-04 21:58                               ` Clem Cole
2021-04-04 23:48                             ` Dave Horsfall
2021-04-04 23:53                               ` Larry McVoy
2021-04-07  5:15                             ` Dan Stromberg
2021-04-05 13:37                       ` Theodore Ts'o
2021-04-07  1:52                         ` Adam Thornton
2021-04-02 15:25               ` Josh Good
2021-04-03  3:10               ` John Cowan
2021-04-02 16:40 ` Boyd Lynn Gerber

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