Dear all,

I agree with Michele's comment here.
Being part of the PC means to commit to the conference, and this is something to be considered in general as the key rule to form a good Program Committee -- arguably, more important than everything else.

So, PC chairs might be willing to solicit PC members to write and/or attract papers.

The same should then be said for the Steering Committee — otherwise we start loosing credibility.

Someone suggested to be also a bit more tolerant on the maximal length of a paper and, say accept a paper that is 10% longer if this is beneficial for the clarity of the paper. One could make this explicit in the CfP and require authors to inform the PC Chairs about such a case.

We are a little puzzled about this suggestion. Instead, we propose to directly and explicitly increase for everybody the page limit to 17 pages for regular papers. What do you think?

This is not at all the same: the figure — be it 15 or 17 — sets a so-called anchor in the authors mind, i.e. an expectation of how long the paper should be. The 10% margin is to ensure that at submission time the authors do not have to frantically cut their paper to the limit. So, raising the limit to 17 pages would send the message that more information can be put in the paper with the result that they will be frantically cutting down to 17 rather than to 15. The actual message should really be "Aim at 15 pages but it's ok to overflow slightly" rather than "Aim at 17 pages sharp".

OK for the rest

Simon