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

[Walter van Holst]

On 2020-05-05 14:15, Jeroen van der Ham via Orga 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.

It is an artefact of the editing process, we shall remove it.

> 
> 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.

Fair enough. In light of the reality that a zero-day is being dropped at 
our event is unlikely to happen we may just remove it. Regardless, 
having a disclosure policy is a good idea. To be discussed within the 
Content team.


> 
>> 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?

There was a general sense in the group that various kind of shit are in 
the process of hitting the fan at a global scale, or are about to, and 
that we are looking for ideas on how to constructively deal with the 
aftermath of the various kinds of shit hitting the fan.


>> 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.

It merely acknowledges that we are self-organised and that we will not 
include interesting stuff outside that theme. Care to join the Content 
Team?

> Who is going to review all of the proposals? Will there be an open
> list of the programme committee?

The Content Team. There won't be an open list. Some darlings will be 
killed and that is rarely a pretty sight.

> 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)

It is not an academic conference review panel. We are discussing rules 
of thumb for reviewers.

Regards,

  Walter