RIP Usenix ATC
bcantrill.dtrace.org
RIP Usenix ATC
1–10 of 40 posts
Re: RIP Usenix ATC
#2Related:
Usenix ATC Announcement
Re: RIP Usenix ATC
#3IMO the implication that the "in-person conference" nature of the forum is what led to its demise rather than its capture by academics/abandonment by industry practitioners is incorrect. I think a better summary of the cause is that most academic research is not that relevant to industry but academics need the prestige of forums like Usenix ATC in a way that industry does not which naturally leads to squeezing industry (and thus much of the relevance) out of the forum over time. I think the same would have happened to a virtual conference/printed journal/etc.
Re: RIP Usenix ATC
#4It was a fun conference. RIP.
Anybody remember the January 21–23 '87 Winter Usenix in Washington, DC, that got snowed in by the giant "Blizzard of Discontent" with 14 inches of snow that closed down Metro? The beloved/infamous Mayor Marion "The Bitch Set Me Up" Barry was attending the Super Bowl in California at the time, a fine tradition that Ted Cruz honored in Cancun during the February 2021 winter storm in Texas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSRW18ahWG0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5KAw9MHeP0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZSROdXWTTc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTMif8cGlcE
Or the one after it on June 8–12 '87 Summer Usenix in Phoenix, Arizona, where they took everybody to a dude ranch for steak? My friend ||ugh Daniel was a vegetarian, and didn't want steak, so they told him to "git" into that line over "yonder", which he did. When he got to the front of the line, they plopped a half of a chicken onto his plate, like that's what a vegetarian wants to see and eat for dinner.
Re: RIP Usenix ATC
#5IMO the implication that the "in-person conference" nature of the forum is what led to its demise rather than its capture by academics/abandonment by industry practitioners is incorrect. I think a better summary of the cause is that most academic research is not that relevant to industry but academics need the prestige of forums like Usenix ATC in a way that industry does not which naturally leads to squeezing indust…
I definitely agree with you, and apologies if that didn't come through in the piece! (Perhaps the rare case where I undershot on the metaphors?)
One thing I didn't mention but certainly believe: academics were attracted to USENIX ATC because of its attendance count (especially at the height of the Dot Com boom when it had nearly 2,000 attendees!) -- but no one really took apart who was attending or what they were looking for. So the conference became more academic because of the attendee count -- but that it became more academic also drove the attendee count down. (I heard from a lot of practitioners who attended that they struggled to find sessions that were relevant to their work in even the broadest sense.) I know I link to it in the piece, but I think Rik Farrow's piece[0] really got right to the heart of all of this.
[0] https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/login_fal...
Re: RIP Usenix ATC
#6IMO the implication that the "in-person conference" nature of the forum is what led to its demise rather than its capture by academics/abandonment by industry practitioners is incorrect. I think a better summary of the cause is that most academic research is not that relevant to industry but academics need the prestige of forums like Usenix ATC in a way that industry does not which naturally leads to squeezing indust…
I don't feel like I have a good understanding of all the context but I don't think that's the implication at all. The post does offhandedly mention that doing online only conferences get "more bang for the buck" but the rest of the post and linked articles and talks discuss other aspects and, in my opinion, mirror your last sentiment about it happening to all conferences and journals.
For example, one of the linked talks from 2016 "A Wardrobe for the Emperor" [0] talks about adding a more social website features (stars, likes, comments, feedback, etc.) to arXiv to improve it. He also talks about the "Papers we love" meetups, which are in person.
I think the Usenix ATC is a highlighting a deeper problem and that it is happening across other conferences, journals and disciplines. I don't have a good theory of why. I think Cantrill's observations are part of the puzzle but I don't have a good sense for why things changed so drastically (and I think they have, compared to 20-40 years ago).
Re: RIP Usenix ATC
#7The flip side of this, though, is that it has probably never been easier to effectively distribute exciting new systems research, both because of the proliferation of smaller, more focused conferences with public video, and because we've all just gotten better at promoting stuff on the Internet. Usenix at its worst was a gatekeeper rather than a facilitator.
Re: RIP Usenix ATC
#8IMO the implication that the "in-person conference" nature of the forum is what led to its demise rather than its capture by academics/abandonment by industry practitioners is incorrect. I think a better summary of the cause is that most academic research is not that relevant to industry but academics need the prestige of forums like Usenix ATC in a way that industry does not which naturally leads to squeezing indust…
The big issue may be companies clamping down on divulging details regarding vulnerabilities and mitigations. Cybersecurity is significantly more weaponized now than it was in the 90s and companies might be facing immense pressure to limit the wrong kind of attention.
Re: RIP Usenix ATC
#9The flip side of this, though, is that it has probably never been easier to effectively distribute exciting new systems research, both because of the proliferation of smaller, more focused conferences with public video, and because we've all just gotten better at promoting stuff on the Internet. Usenix at its worst was a gatekeeper rather than a facilitator.
I absolutely agree, and I got to as much in my USENIX ATC 2016 keynote[0]: there are so many vectors now for sharing new ideas, it's almost hard to remember that in the heyday of USENIX ATC, technical conferences were really one of the only ways (along with USENET, really) for practitioners to broadcast a new idea. While there were perhaps upsides to having such limited vectors with respect to high signal, there were of course many more downsides; systems research has been well-served by information connectedness!
[0] https://speakerdeck.com/bcantrill/a-wardrobe-for-the-emperor...
Re: RIP Usenix ATC
#10IMO the implication that the "in-person conference" nature of the forum is what led to its demise rather than its capture by academics/abandonment by industry practitioners is incorrect. I think a better summary of the cause is that most academic research is not that relevant to industry but academics need the prestige of forums like Usenix ATC in a way that industry does not which naturally leads to squeezing indust…
I definitely agree with you, and apologies if that didn't come through in the piece! (Perhaps the rare case where I undershot on the metaphors?) One thing I didn't mention but certainly believe: academics were attracted to USENIX ATC because of its attendance count (especially at the height of the Dot Com boom when it had nearly 2,000 attendees!) -- but no one really took apart who was attending or what they were loo…
I didn't mean to imply that I disagreed with anything other than that specific point (which perhaps is more nostalgia for the halcyon days of in-person conferences than anything else).
I do think that you correctly identified a major source of the problem back in 2004 as economic factors. I was at Mozilla when Rust was built (though not directly involved) and the sum of Mozilla's investment into Rust over the years easily broke into the 8 digits. Google's investment in Go I'm sure is an order of magnitude or two more than that. This is simply beyond the capacity of any academic institution or grant process. The only academic efforts that get to this level require Acts of Congress (e.g. LIGO, the Human Genome Project, the James Webb Space Telescope, etc).
And anyone who can afford to drop $10M+ into development can find channels for distributing and publicizing their work that don't go through program committees. Open source is definitely a big part of that but I don't think that's the whole story. I'd certainly count CUDA as a major advance in systems software since 2004, for instance.