About the young researchers forum

In June, William K. Moses Jr. (Billy) and I organized the online Young Researchers Forum of the PODC/DISC community. We thought it might be helpful to write a couple of blog posts to document and share our experience. In this post, I discuss the motivations and inspirations for this event.

Motivations

There are already many events for whose studying the theory of distributed computing, such as the conferences PODC, DISC, OPODIS, SSS, SIROCCO, etc. Conferences play an important role for networking, but for young researchers it might not be the best format: it might be intimidating to give talks and speak to more senior researchers, and it’s easy to feel isolated or unsure of one’s place in the field. Also, many people cannot participate in conferences, for various reasons:

• Getting a visa can be hard or impossible, especially for researchers who are not from Europe and North America.

• There might not be enough money in the group for the trip, or maybe there is enough money for only one participant to one conference. Especially if one does not have a paper to present.

• Conferences have a high carbon cost, and some researchers may opt out for ecological reasons.

For these reasons we thought that it was important to have an online event for young researchers.

Inspiration

We had several inspiration for this event:

• The French graph theory community has an annual in-person called JGA, where the young researchers present their work to the community. It has become a key venue for networking in a friendly, supportive atmosphere. (It’s said — only half-jokingly — that this is where you find your future colleagues.)

• Some conferences host sessions geared toward newcomers, such as the (onsite) young researcher forum of the computational geometry community (a satellite event of SoCG).

• Finally, the COVID-19 pandemic taught us a lot about organizing effective online events