Off the Beaten Track

News (December 19): OBT 2016 accepted nine talk proposals!

News (November 13): OBT 2016 received fourteen submissions! Thanks to everyone who submitted a talk proposal.

News (November 10): We’ve extended the submission deadline to “Anywhere on Earth” Thursday, November 12. Here’s a handy countdown timer.

News (November 9): OBT is pleased to be able to provide financial assistance for speaker expenses this year. If you have submitted or plan to submit a talk proposal and you want to request funding for travel, workshop registration, and accommodation while at the workshop, please complete the funding application form.

News (November 6): Submissions are due “Anywhere on Earth” Monday, November 9.

News (October 26): Our keynote speakers at OBT 2016 will be Chris Martens and Bob Atkey!

Background

Programming language researchers have the principles, tools, algorithms and abstractions to solve all kinds of problems, in all areas of computer science. However, identifying and evaluating new problems, particularly those that lie outside the typical core PL problems we all know and love, can be a significant challenge. This workshop’s goal is to identify and discuss problems that do not often show up in our top conferences, but where programming language research can make a substantial impact. We hope fora like this will increase the diversity of problems that are studied by PL researchers and thus increase our community’s impact on the world.

While many workshops associated with POPL have become more like mini-conferences themselves, this is an anti-goal for OBT. The workshop will be informal and structured to encourage discussion. We are at least as interested in problems as in solutions.

Scope

A good submission is one that outlines a new problem or an interesting, underrepresented problem domain. Good submissions may also remind the PL community of problems that were once in vogue but have not recently been seen in top PL conferences. Good submissions do not need to propose complete or even partial solutions, though there should be some reason to believe that programming languages researchers have the tools necessary to search for solutions in the area at hand. Submissions that seem likely to stimulate discussion about the direction of programming language research are encouraged.

Use your imagination. It’s hard to imagine how a talk proposal that discusses programming languages could be considered out of scope. If in doubt, ask the program chair.

Prior OBTs

2016 marks the fifth year of OBT and of co-location with POPL. The previous four workshops were:

• OBT 2015, Mumbai, India
• OBT 2014, San Diego, USA
• OBT 2013, Rome, Italy
• OBT 2012, Philadelphia, USA

Events

Call for Talk Proposals

Submission site

Please submit your talk proposal via EasyChair: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=obt2016

Format

All submissions should be in PDF format, two pages or less, in at least 10pt font, printable on US Letter paper. Authors are welcome to include links to multimedia content such as YouTube videos or online demos. Reviewers may or may not view linked documents; it is up to authors to convince the reviewers to do so.

For each accepted submission, one of the co-authors will give a talk at the workshop. The length of the talk will depend on the submissions received and how the program committee decides to assemble the program.

Reviewing

Reviewing of submissions will be very light. Authors should not expect a detailed analysis of their submission by the program committee. Accepted submissions will be posted as is on this web site. By submitting a document, you agree that if it is accepted, it may be posted and you agree that one of the co-authors will attend the workshop and give a talk there. There will be no revision process and no formal publication.

Financial support for speakers

OBT is pleased to be able to provide financial assistance for speaker expenses this year. If you have submitted or plan to submit a talk proposal and you want to request funding for travel, workshop registration, and accommodation while at the workshop, please complete the funding application form.

Note that the funding process is separate from the talk acceptance process; when the program committee reviews your talk proposal, they will not be able to see whether you’ve submitted a request for funding or not.

• Lea Albaugh and James McCann. Challenges Facing a High-Level Language for Machine Knitting
• Suguman Bansal and Swarat Chaudhuri. Chanakya: Computer-Aided Strategic Reasoning
• William Byrd. New Tools and Practices for Online Collaboration in Teaching, Learning, and Research of Programming Languages
• Kyle Headley and Matthew Hammer. Correct-by-Construction Interactive Software: From Declarative Specifications to Efficient Implementations
• Neelakantan Krishnaswami. The Semantics of Syntax: Applying Denotational Semantics to Hygienic Macro Systems
• Randolph Langley. Starting from a Clean Slate: Creating a Top-down Parseable Runtime
• Damiano Mazza. Affine Functional Programs as Higher-order Boolean Circuits
• Christopher Meiklejohn. Declarative, Secure, Convergent Edge Computation
• Joseph Osborn and Michael Mateas. Programming Interactivity Requires Both Semantics and Semiotics