Responses 65 Quality of Conference (1 being lowest, 5 being highest) 1 0 (0%) 2 3 (4.5%) 3 9 (13.5%) 4 39 (59%) 5 14 (21%) Meals and Breaks 1 1 (1.5%) 2 8 (12%) 3 24 (37%) 4 24 (37%) 5 8 (12%) Reception 1 0 (0%) 2 2 (3%) 3 3 (4.5%) 4 26 (40%) 5 20 (31%) NA (No Answer) 14 (21.5%) Social Event (Fogarty Winery) 1 1 (1.5%) 2 2 (3%) 3 6 (9%) 4 12 (18%) 5 26 (40%) NA (No Answer) 18 (28%) - many people filled in forms on Thursday before attending. Information About Stanford 1 6 (9%) 2 14 (21.5%) 3 15 (23%) 4 21 (32.5%) 5 7 (11%) NA 2 (3%) Audio Visual 1 1 (1.5%) 2 8 (12%) 3 19 (29%) 4 26 (40%) 5 6 (9%) NA 5 (7.5%) How Learned about Conference (multiple answers OK) Previous Year's SIGCOMM: 21 Direct Mail: 24 ACM Publications: 22 WWW: 30 E-mail: 17 Other: 12 Craig While my mind and the questionnaire results are still fresh in my mind, here's my quick post mortem on SIGCOMM '96. Overall the general conference format continues to (single track, etc.) work very very well, so I'll focus on the various little things we did differently this year. New Things That Worked Well * Tutorials -- while I think this is the second (third) year that people applied to teach tutorials, it worked far better this year than any prior year -- tutorial attendance broke all records. Kudos to Alden Jackson for his hard work. Alden will probably be reporting soon (he has the tutorial questionnaire results) but I suspect the big win was a mix of taking applications and Alden searching out a few good instructors (so we get the benefit of both hard legwork and volunteers). * Hiring a registration company - this was a huge win. It freed me from having to find a registration chair and freed Pat McCarren and Judy Osteller from having to coach a new registration chair. Instead Pat and Judy could focus on conference logistics like food service, posters, etc., which really helped. * Walkie Talkies - we got them because the Stanford campus is somewhat big -- they really helped in coordination the first couple of days as people were scattered around (and no need to run around to find someone). * High Quality shirts for volunteers -- they helped identify staff (which was nice) and Pat reports that student volunteers seem to have felt an extra sense of commitment in their "uniform." I also had a number of requests from PC members and others about where they could buy shirts. This was not very expensive (under $1500 total). * Bus service -- this worked very well (though I'm not sure future conferences need it -- the big win was it helped people around campus) * The winetasting reception -- by making the reception a wine tasting we apparently added a little sparkle to the reception that brought extra folks in (moral here may not be wine so much as that adding a little something to the reception helps -- the Cannes beach will probably do just fine :-)). New Things On Which Results are Mixed * MBONE - the distribution of MBONE was done very professionally (thanks to Brad Karp, Stanford, and Precept). However, the logistics of MBONE distribution (getting speaker slides, telling speakers they had to stand at the podium, arranging multiple audio feeds, etc) was very painful. New Things That Didn't Go So Well * Hardbound proceedings -- only sold a few. Several people said if they could have ordered one in advance for an extra $10 they would have done it, but my view is this is a failed experiment. * SITN distribution of tutorials on video -- we had a handful of students (at least in the US -- haven't yet heard how many took the tutorials in Sweden). The problem here was that SITN didn't finalize negotiations with us until a few days before the conference. I don't think this proved a good test of what worked or didn't. Other Goofs * We didn't get information about how to get around campus on-line fast enough. * We should have had campus information mailed back by the registration company with the registration confirmation (many people assumed it was in the letter they got -- but it wasn't). * We should have proofread the letter the registration company planned to send out (we didn't and so we only found a typo when I got my registration) * Misbooking volunteers - we had a lot of student volunteers and they worked hard (and only one failed to show). But I didn't book them for the right times. We had a lot of students on Wednesday afternoon and during the day on Thursday. We really needed them on Monday morning, Tuesday (all day) and Wednesday AM. * We didn't get the SIGCOMM student travel grant information mailed out before the deadline so the number of applications declined. (We still had an exceptional bunch of students). Since this has been a perennial problem, I recommend sending out a *separate* mailing. * Assuming Stanford would handle housing professionally -- Stanford turned out to give rotten information to people staying on campus -- it took some people over an hour to figure out where to register for their room. Other Comments * Splitting the social event in two seems to have been accepted (the venue was nice enough that I didn't hear a lot of grumbling) but people said that, all things being equal, they would have preferred to have everyone there at once. * People really liked the e-mail facilities we had (where people could just walk to a large computing cluster and log in -- no waiting).