“Computing Research that Changed the World” Event
“Isn’t it great to have a President who cares about science?” This was a statement made by Google CEO Eric Schmidt to a group of academics and industry leaders a few weeks ago. Indeed, there has been a huge amount of activity in Washington lately, as large chunks of the government’s policies on science and technology get renewed and/or rewritten. Refreshingly, academics are being called upon to help shape these policies to an extent not seen in quite a while.
As mentioned on the CCC Blog yesterday, an interesting one-day symposium will be held on March 25 at the Library of Congress. Entitled, “Computing Research that Changed the World”, this CCC-organized event is being put on in collaboration with three congressmen (Gordon D-TN, Ehlers R-MI, and Lipinski D-IL) who have been working on national policy for IT research. The symposium is intended to review some of the reasons for the success of the past 25 years of federal IT research investment, and perhaps draw some lessons for the future. An interesting slate of presentations, designed for a general-public audience, plus panel discussions, are on the agenda.
Dozens of topics were possible for this event, and so it was a real struggle to limit this to the few that could fit easily into a one-day event. Ed Lazowska and I started some community discussion on the CCC blog, which netted a large number of great suggestions and ideas. Then Dan Reed led a program committee to propose the overall framework for the symposium agenda and suggest possible topics and speakers. Finally, a subgroup of the CCC put the whole final agenda together. (This subgroup is listed on the symposium web page at http://www.cra.org/ccc/locsymposium.php.) I played a role in helping with the agenda, and our own Luis von Ahn is one of the featured speakers.
The room at the Library of Congress is fairly small, and so attendance is limited to only about 100 people (including the speakers!) — indeed there are no more slots available. An evening reception will be in a different building and will be open to many more people. Videos of the presentations will be made available online. Should be interesting, and despite the fact that it will represent such a narrow slice of what has happened over the past 25 years, I’m optimistic that the overall impression conveyed will be compelling and informative for future policy.
Peter Lee @ March 16, 2009