[Tccc] Regarding presentation quality (was: presentations by non-authors)

I agree with most comments posted here (ref: Henning, skoric, ...)

In my personal view, conferences should adopt a culture of encouragement (obviously
in a justifiable manner). I am not sure awards should be called "Best Paper".
This can potentially insult other authors. One of my excellent PhD students
was so devasted when she found that her paper did not win the Best Paper
award (it was short-listed - this was about a decade ago). She invested
a couple of months to successfully prove that the content of the paper
that won the award was questionable and the results reported in that
paper could not have been correct.)

Terms/words such as BEST PAPER, imply the manuscript is the best of all
papers submitted to that journal/conference/workshop; there is no such
a unique paper in any journal/conference/workshop.

My suggestion (and in the past I have failed to push this through) is
to have categories such as:

1. outstanding formal presentation
2. outstanding research contribution in a specific area, XXX
3. outstanding technical contribution in a specific area, XXX
and possibly others.

The above would help the editorial board to also recognize and value
institutional diversity - a paper submitted by an author affiliated
with a teaching-oriented institution vs research-oriented one; should
they both be treated at the same level.

Sorry this got long.

Hamid
---------------
> There are three legitimate reasons:
>
> (1) logistics: if you want a plaque, you can't wait until after all the presentations;
>
> (2) timing: often, the best-paper awardee is scheduled early in the conference, to avoid accidenta
> lly scheduling it as the last paper on Friday afternoon;
>
> (3) impact: the legitimate reason - if the best paper award is meant to recognize the paper most l
> ikely to have a long-term impact, presentation is not really a criterion. Just because the present
> er was a nervous PhD student who mumbled the presentation read off a sheet word-by-word (has happe
> ned...), this doesn't diminish the technical impact or elegance.
>
> I do think there should be a recognition of some sort for "best presentation", although that's a t
> ough call to make. Featuring the presentation as a video on the conference home page might be a go
> od way to highlight such presentations.
>
> Henning
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