It takes serving in a role like the program chair of the American Control Conference to fully appreciate the dedication and volunteer spirit that imbue our community. Thus I’d like to start this introduction to the technical program by acknowledging those involved … to the authors, the reviewers, the members of the Program Committee and the CSS Conference Editorial Board, the Society Review Chairs, the session chairs and cochairs, the organizers of invited and tutorial sessions and workshops, you are responsible for the technical quality of this conference. Thank you for your contributions!
As noted in the General Chair’s welcome message, the ACC-08 technical program comprises 22 invited session, 6 tutorial session, 108 contributed sessions in lecture format, and 11 interactive sessions (each of these consists of up to 12 papers/demonstrations). We received a total of 1,283 submissions. The submission volume this year is down (about 20%) from the last few years, but in the interests of maintaining the quality of the conference we did not attempt a proportionate increase in the acceptance rate. Ultimately, 66% of contributed papers and 89% of invited papers were accepted for inclusion in the final program. Even with significantly fewer papers than has been typical recently, we are at close to the limit of what the hotel can accommodate, with, in most tracks, 16 lecture and 2 interactive sessions scheduled in parallel.
For those readers whose appetite for statistics the above data only whetted, here are some breakdowns of submissions by country (i.e., the country of affiliation of the corresponding author). Papers came to us from 58 nations—from Algeria to Yugoslavia in the alphabetical sort. Just barely less than half (49%) of all submissions were from the U.S. China was the next most represented with 14%. Canada, Japan, Italy, France, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Brazil rounded out the top ten (in that order). And here’s an interesting tidbit: only one country with more than 10 submissions had none rejected … Sweden. The Netherlands, Germany, and Norway also achieved a relatively high success rate (and the former two had a larger number of papers in the pool).
As in several recent controls conferences and as alluded to above, the 2008 ACC includes presentations in both traditional lecture and “interactive” formats. I would like to emphasize that the review process and acceptance criteria for all contributed papers were identical, regardless of the presentation-format preference indicated by authors. Furthermore, once acceptance decisions were made, authors’ preferences for presentation format were strictly followed in preparing the program (the only flexibility the program committee had on this matter was with respect to papers for which authors had expressed “no preference” on presentation format—these papers were allocated to lecture and interactive sessions as appropriate to create coherent and complete sessions).
The interactive sessions will be held in parallel with lecture sessions during the “A” (9:20 – 11:20 a.m.) and “B” (1:40 – 3:40 p.m.) slots on all three days of the conference. Presenters will have a poster board and table available and can use this space to display their work and/or to provide software/hardware demonstrations for attendees. This year’s ACC will also give best-presentation awards for interactive sessions—up to two awards will be given for each such session. Leading members of our community have agreed to chair and adjudicate these sessions.
The ACC program includes one additional innovation related to interactive sessions. For the “C” slots (4 – 6 p.m.) on Wednesday and Thursday, the interactive session room will be available to conference attendees for “impromptu” discussions and presentations. Attendees can sign up for presentation spaces—these come complete with a poster board, a flip chart with markers, and a table and chairs—at the registration area. We have often heard that our conferences should provide some facilities for doing research, not just presenting the results of research already done; these “impromptu interactive sessions” are our attempt at fulfilling this request, and we’re looking forward to seeing if the experiment is successful!
I’d like to close with another expression of appreciation. There are so many people I would like to thank that listing names is infeasible, but I am especially indebted to Thomas Parisini and Pradeep Misra for their support—as PaperPlaza wizards and in a very real sense as the institutional memory for all things related to the ACC technical program.
I hope you find attending the 2008 American Control Conference an intellectually stimulating experience (Seattle coffee should help), and fun too!
Tariq Samad
Program Chair