Are the conferences being held too often?

[Brian Kantor]

I just KNOW I'm going to get flamed for this....

I wonder if perhaps the USENIX conferences are being held too often - it
seems to me that what with the main conferences about 6 months apart,
and all the special workshops, etc., doesn't it seem that there just
aren't enough GOOD papers being written out there to ensure that each
conference has a full worthwhile technical program.

The people who reviewed the papers for the last conference mentioned
how few good papers they finally received, and I'm told of similar
problems in other professional societies.

It seems to me that we might have better and more useful conferences if
we had fewer of them.  Despite the party-hearty attitude so deeply
ingrained in my heart, I still find it irksome to fly somewhere and
survive a hotel for a week and come back with little to show for it.
Thank goodness for the tutorials, which are always quite good.

Or maybe we should be re-presenting the best papers from the
special-interest conferences and workshops as a second track
at the main conferences.
	- Brian