[Tccc] presentations by non-authors

Hi,

in the past, we had problems that accepted papers didn't get presented, when authors would not show up at the conference. This has since been fixed, usually by requiring a presentation before accepted papers are published in the digital library.

My impression at GLOBECOM this year is that roughly 1/3 of the papers are presented by someone other than the authors. This usually means that it is impossible to ask any substantial questions. Several authors actually directly end with a slide that says "send questions to the authors by email."

One of the main attractions of attending a conference IMO is being able to interact with the authors, both in the session and during the breaks. When authors aren't here, that's not possible and the value of the conference is greatly diminished. I might as well watch a YouTube video of the talk.

(I do understand that sometimes visa issues, etc. can prevent an author from attending a conference on short notice. But I don't believe this explains the large number of cases I see here.)

An easy fix would be to require presentation of a paper *by an author* before it's published. I'm wondering what others think of this idea?

Lars