[mch2021-orga] Call for Comments on Call for Papers

[Jeroen van der Ham]

Hi,

> On 5 May 2020, at 09:24, Robin Edgar <robinedgar at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> What kind of an audience can I expect?
> 
> A motley crew of around 5000 hackers, free-thinkers, philosophers, activists, geeks, scientists, artists, makers, creative minds, and others from all over the world will convene to contemplate, reflect, share, discuss, criticise, look ahead, code, build, and reflect. 

I don’t understand why you want to strike out “contemplate, reflect”. Can you explain why you want to include that?
Also note that that does not work in plain text.

> 
> What kind of content are you looking for?
> 
> We're into technology, society and science. We would like this event to be many things at once and call on you to contribute in the following (or other interesting) domains: information security, decentralised infrastructures hardware hacks, 'sploits, surveillance and/or anti-surveillance, free culture, free software, art, mechatronic or otherwise. Escapist tinkering with technology on a campground below sealevel? Yes, please. Dreaming about a solarpunk future? Tell us all about it. Confronting your fellow participants with the harsh realities of surveillance capitalism? Come aboard. Launching water rockets with the little and not-so-little ones? Sounds fantastic! Making trippy kaleidoscopes of high- and low-tech wonder, seriously reflecting upon ourselves and the world, wallowing in nostalgic retro-computing, unadulterated fun as well as catching up with each other? This event is for all ages. 

The security world has grown a lot in the past 30 years. Dropping 0-days at a conference almost never happens anymore. Most conferences also have pretty good guidelines on how to deal with disclosures. If you want to include “’sploits” in there, I would recommend you also have some mention of your recommended disclosure policy in there.

> Yes, that is pretty eclectic, is there something that ties the room together?
> 
> While MCH2021's lineage was buidling up, logistics chains got longer and more fragile, civil liberties and democracies eroded further and improvements in information security got swamped by wholesale sectors of society adopting ICT in ways that ignored hard-learned lessons from the past. Neither the near-term or long-term future are looking great either. Part of our joint mission for August 2021 is figuring out how exactly we, as a community, can deal with this. How to rebound from drastic events, from the micro- to the macroscale. Because nobody expects a Black Swan and since we're also pretty good at ignoring elephants in our rooms, the question is how to be able to rebound from either creature. The future is Eventually Consistent, it is up to us what kind of consistency it'll have.

I could follow the CFP until this section. I can’t make anything out of this section, I don’t understand what it is that you want to achieve, whether this is a political statement or not, or that you’re just looking for constructive ideas. Can you clarify the intention so that we can help create a better text describing that intention?

> 
> And if I don't like this theme?
> 
> It is up to you to define what will happen at MCH2021. This is a call for participation to you, the avant-garde of the information revolution and those who live and breathe technology, subversively or just retro and everything in between. Help us to create the inconceivable. Submit early, submit often - submit to MCH2021.
> 
> By stepping forward you can help make MCH2021 the most exciting, inspiring and awesome community-driven event everyone is looking forward to. Submit your proposal now, and if you know of someone you think should be present, ask them to submit!

This pulls the carpet out from under everything you’ve built up in your text.

Also, you will have a programme committee, selection procedure or something to streamline everything into something vaguely coherent. They will make decisions based on consensus. I would appreciate to have some consensus externally, instead of a closed process where consensus forming happens in a small group, where you only see the outcome.

> What happens after Februariy 1st, 2021?
> 
> All proposals submitted before the deadline will be reviewed. Review of proposals submitted after the deadline may or may not happen. Submission after the deadline comes with a tacit agreement to bribe the Content Team with single malt whiskeys. Notifications of acceptance or rejection will start being sent out before April 30th, 2021. A rejection can also mean that we would like to recommend your proposal to villages that have their own programmes, so do not despair.

Who is going to review all of the proposals? Will there be an open list of the programme committee?
Will there be programme chairs that look after the review process?
Can we create some guidelines for reviewers so that they know what criteria to review on, what is expected of reviewers in terms of confidentiality, objectivity, marking conflicts of interests, et cetera? 
(I mean, not everyone has experience as academic/conference reviewer)


Thanks,
Jeroen.