Long-term planning and implementation of PODC is the responsibility of the PODC Steering Committee. The Steering Committee comprises the following individuals: an elected chair; the current Program-Committee chair; the two previous Program-Committee chairs; the current general chair; the current treasurer; and an elected member at-large. Terms expire at the end of PODC of the relevant year (e.g., currently the Program-Committee chairs for 2001, 2002, and 2003 are on the committee; after the end of PODC 2003, the Program-Committee chair for 2001 will leave the committee and be replaced by the Program-Committee chair for 2004).
The position of Steering-Committee chair is held for three years, with elections taking place at the PODC business meeting. The current Steering-Committee chair is Gil Neiger, whose term expires at the end of PODC 2003. Thus, there will be an election to choose his successor this year. (Previous Steering-Committee chairs were Michael Merritt, Maurice Herlihy, Cynthia Dwork.)
The Steering-Committee chair is expected to lead the Steering Committee during his or her term of office. The focus of the chair is on PODC's long-term position; for example, while the general chair may manage raising funds for one year's PODC, the Steering-Committee chair may be responsible for raising funds for longer-term projects (e.g., the endowment for the Dijkstra Prize). Because of this long-term focus, the Steering-Committee chair is usually responsible for identifying sites for future PODCs.
This year, there are two nominees for the position of Steering-Committee chair:
- James E. Burns
- Mark Tuttle
The position will be filled by the candidate receiving a majority of votes at the PODC 2003 business meeting. If no candidate receives a majority during the first round of voting, the two leading candidates will enter a second round of voting.
The nominees for Steering Committee chair have been invited to submit position statements. These will appear on this web page when they are available.
James E. Burns
Mark Tuttle
PODC is a special conference for me. I grew up in the PODC world as a student, many of my friends come from PODC, and I have attended all but two meetings of the conference since 1985.
The Steering Committee Chair is primarily an administrative position. I have not done any administrative work for PODC itself, but I do have some experience in conference administration that includes founding and maintaining a nonprofit corporation to administer the TARK conference (www.tark.org).
These could be good times for PODC. Now that music sharing has broken the back of the client-server model and become the first killer application for peer-to-peer computing, many of the issues studied by PODC fifteen years ago are coming into the mainstream. Go to a systems conference today and count the number of times a phrase like "Byzantine Agreement" appears in the proceedings. The biggest problem PODC faces today, although the situation has improved recently, is where is the next generation? How do we ensure that the next generation is trained in the abstractions and analysis techniques we know so well, and draw them into PODC to be our next generation of leadership?
Last modified: July 13, 2003