Complaint about Uniforum plenary sessions

[Steve Glaser]

ek.  (The January 86 meetings are scheduled for
different citys at different times.)

Uniforum is a conference put on by /usr/group and seems to be evolving
towards a trade show sort of conference.  My guess is that by typical
trade show standards, the papers at Uniforum were above average.  The
problem is that many engineers don't go to trade shows (or if they do,
they ignore the sessions).  Try going to COMDEX sometime.

The USENIX Association has been trying to stay in the technical realm.
Papers attempting to push a particular product are discouraged by both
the program committe and the membership (some may sneak in anyway -
it's hard to control what somebody says after you give them get the
podium).

On the whole, the quality of papers at Usenix is improving.  For the
Portland conference, selected papers will be reviewd by Software
Practice and Experience for a special edition.

	Steve Glaser

P.S.  Dates for USENIX/Portland are June 11-14, 1985.  1-2 page
abstracts are due March 18th (yes that's right, March 18th).  You can
mail abstracts to ucbvax!portland.  Further details are available from
the USENIX Conference Office P.O. Box 385 Sunset Beach CA 90742 (phone
213-592-3243 or 213-592-1381).  A pre-registration packet will be
mailed out in early April.