Re: PL reading group; Security reading group

[Glenn Ammons <ammons@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tom,

Thanks for raising your concerns about the reading groups and
seminars.  We discussed your email in the PL reading group today, and
as the organizer of the PL reading group, I'll summarize our
consensus.

First, no one wants the reading group to supplant the seminar.  The
two have different formats, and we want to have both.

The reading group has a discussion format.  Everyone reads the paper
before coming to the meeting, and everyone participates in the
discussion.  Everyone feels free to say what they like: questions and
comments that betray a basic lack of understanding of the paper,
programming languages, research, or basic arithmetic are maybe not
encouraged, but they aren't discouraged either.  The discussion leader
is supposed to keep the discussion moving, but he does not make a
presentation and so doesn't have to do much more preparation than
anyone else.  Also, everyone gets an equal chance to have their say
about the paper.

We don't think that allowing faculty to attend would destroy the
atmosphere of the reading group, and we want to encourage faculty to
contribute.  The fact that we have not invited faculty before is
accidental: we originally modelled the PL reading group on the
architecture reading group, and they do not invite faculty.  We're
sorry that you were told that you couldn't attend.

We do want to keep the format of the reading group.  In contrast, the
PL seminar is a presentation format.  The people in the audience can
just show up, if they like.  The presenter has to prepare an hour-long
talk about his topic.  So, it's easier to be in the audience at the
seminar than it is to attend the reading group, but harder to be a
presenter.  There are advantages to the seminar format: students get
practice giving talks, people can show up on the spur of the moment
and learn something, and the presentations are more structured than a
freewheeling discussion.  But the reading group format has advantages,
too, and that's why we want both.

Speaking for myself now, I think that we should talk about how we can
resurrect the PL seminar.  I gave my first talk there as a first-year
graduate student (I presented someone else's paper), and it was a
great experience.  As you point out, the PL seminar gets new students
involved in research.  In my opinion, the reading group doesn't do
that nearly as well.

--glenn