Lindsey Kuper

The Onward! 2015 conference has opened their call for papers, and I’m very excited to be serving on the program committee this year!

I’ve never been involved with an event quite like Onward1 before. Quoting from the conference website:

Onward! is looking for grand visions and new paradigms that could make a big difference in how we will one day build software. But Onward! is not looking for research-as-usual papers – conferences like OOPSLA are the place for that. Those conferences require rigorous validation such as theorems or empirical experiments, which are necessary for scientific progress, but which typically preclude discussion of early-stage ideas. Onward! papers must also supply some degree of validation because mere speculation is not a good basis for progress. However, Onward! accepts less rigorous methods of validation such as compelling arguments, exploratory implementations, and substantial examples. The use of worked-out examples to support new ideas is strongly encouraged.

Like OBT, then, Onward is looking for new, early-stage ideas. But, while OBT is an intimate, talks-only workshop, Onward is a conference that solicits full-length papers. As a result, there’s a lot more work for me to do as a reviewer – but I’m hopeful that since this is Onward, it will be the fun kind of reviewing work: more evaluation of papers based on their ideas and their presentation, and less squinting at benchmark results and checking of math. Plus, Onward is in Pittsburgh this fall (it’s part of SPLASH, as usual), so now I have an excuse to go and see my Pittsburgher friends (and isn’t seeing friends the real reason for attending conferences, anyway)?

Submissions are due April 2nd, and a link to the submission site will be posted soon. I look forward to reading and learning about your ideas on the future of software and programming!

  1. We’ve been told that the “!” is optional. ↩

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