Comments about ITiCSE 2001

General

• My first time attending and I found it very valuable. Compares well to SIGCSE. Very relevant talks, and to make connections.
• I enjoy the greater "international" participation!
• Conference Dinner was excellent. Food in general, excellent.
• E-mail receipt for conference fee is not sufficient.
• Well prepared and well organised. An excellent conference matching the high standards of previous ITiCSEs.
• Why not have the band [at the conference dinner] play outside because the NOISE was deafening.
• Great job!
• Great conference. The best ITiCSE I've been to. Sally did a fantastic job.
• It has been a great conference again. I don't want to rank it with the previous ones for fear of down-playing them. This one has been in the same spirit as Uppsala, Dublin, Helsinki - EXCELLENT!
• I really enjoyed ITiCSE.
• It has been a great conference and shows a great deal of planning and careful execution.
• Very homey conference.
• Generally a thought-provoking, well-run conference. Thanks.
• A very nice conference. Should be more International .
• Missing half hour on the brewery tour :-(
• Generally it was very good BUT the conference website was not accessible at least a day before the conference. This was inconvenient to get information. Also, a few things were not very well informed (e.g. excursion to Shepherd Neame Brewery on Tuesday).
• Very enjoyable conference. Good forum for communicating.
• Excellent forum - met a number of people with similar problems to me.
• Well organised.
• Great to have corporate sponsorship for dinner & receptions.
• Great conference.
• Sally Fincher et al were very helpful.
• Thanks for the backpack!
• The conference staff members were very helpful.
• Well done! Thorough planning ... to brilliant execution.
• My first time at ITiCSE. Excellent!
• Thanks to the hardworking committee and especially to Sally .

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Venue/ Accommodation

• No bath en-suite.
• Lack of information about time/venue for breakfast and venue for registration and for conference dinner.
• At lunchtime my special diet was ignored.
• Why not have ice water, cold pop etc. for breaks?
• The rooms were uncomfortable for the sessions - too hot, NO air conditioning .
• Too hot.
• Easy to get around and a beautiful location!
• A beautiful location and excellent meals.
• The tea/coffee lounge was too small for that amount of people.
• Better disabled access. Many of the buildings have stairs & no lifts - and some staff did not know where the lifts were when I asked. Also the venues (accommodation, lunch, papers) were spread out which made it a struggle for disabled people to get back & forth.
• Ugh! Nescafe!
• Posters needed more space.
• Convenient to have housing and food near the conference facility.
• Very good to have everything nearby each other at the campus. Nice city, but no time to see the Cathedral (in the opening hours).
• Loved Canterbury.
• Need more water in breaks.
• It was great to have choices for the lunch meals rather than imposed menus.
• The music at the conference dinner was great (although I found it slightly difficult to hear the lyrics).
• Faster response to fire alarms needed.

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Tutorials

• Tutorials were poorly organised - even presenters did not know when and where they would be held. For next year make these scheduling decisions early - some people interested in tutorials need to know the details before they make their travel arrangements - 2 months before the conference.
• Clear advance schedule for tutorials would have helped. I assumed they started at 9am Sunday and came a day earlier because of that.

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Organisation

• Registration was cumbersome - not on-line until after on-time deadline and still not secure!
• A well run affair this year.
• Overall very well organised conference and very enjoyable and useful.

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Keynote Speakers

• Lose the speaker at dinner.
• I was uncomfortable during the dinner speaker because I felt we were very rude to the speaker by not giving him our attention.
• Couldn't hear dinner speaker - bad acoustics.
• Dinner speaker was very good but the audience was rude. Poor acoustics.
• The speakers in the main sessions were excellent.
• Keynote speakers were excellent!
• Excellent keynote speakers.
• Excellent keynote speakers.
• Excellent keynote speakers.
• Excellent choice of keynote speakers (shame about the dinner speaker).
• Couldn't hear the [conference dinner] speaker due to the acoustics (food was good).
• Enjoyed the keynote speakers very much.
• Dinner speaker was unintelligible. No one at our table could understand ANY of this keynote.
• Disappointing after-dinner speaker. Get it sponsored by Stringfellows next time.

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Papers

• 4 page limitation makes papers too short.
• You should be able to receive papers in formats other than rtf e.g. LaTeX, postscript, pdf (rtf is mostly Microsoft only, has bad typography etc.).
• Some papers very good - some still anecdotal where data is needed.
• Some papers were excellent, some very weak.
• I found that 15 minutes paper presentation/5 minutes questions was a little compressed. Speakers needed about 10 minutes just to set the scene.
• Many helpful and interesting papers

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Programme

• Really liked the Working Group feedback session.
• The Tips & Techniques session was a good, new improvement!
• Balance between posters & papers about right.
• The final panel session that allowed general discussion was very worthwhile.
• It was nice to have larger display boards for the posters.

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Comments for ITiCSE 2002

General

• Allow touring time by modifying the schedule: start earlier, end earlier.
• Continue extra-curricular activities for touring.
• Provide plug points in classrooms for laptop users.
• Something for "new" and "lonely" people in the evenings: "Anybody who likes can go to xxx where you can buy a cup of tea or ..."
• No fire alarms.
• One copy of the proceedings for each author.
• More places to sit down during breaks.
• There could be national or regional "delegates" whose role would be to make sure a wider dissemination of the call for papers. SIGCSE conferences includes one such member in each committee. In particular, I could practice such a dissemination in Spain effectively.
• Check facilities in advance to make sure everything works OK.
• I'd prefer to have the tours included in the conference registration fee. I know this raises the cost, but then you have a lot more people participating.
• Have keynote speakers like the first two [of 2001].
• Have better acoustics for the dance/band. Possibly instead of having a dance band, have a less loud "atmosphere band" and more socialising.
• Better keynote speakers.
• Recognise which tours (excursions) are going to be popular and have a second coach for them.
• Make accommodation options cleare.
• If there is to be some music after the conference dinner it would be great that the acoustics of the venue is taken into consideration.
• Key information/announcements notice board.
• I wish the location for the posters had been larger.
• Hard to improve on 2001.
• Permit bare feet at breakfast.
• Please put proceedings on CD and let us choose that or paper - heavy for those of us travelling with backpacks.

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Organisation

• Please make information available well ahead of time regarding the University buildings being used (especially for registration).
• Mineral water in every session.
• Send confirmation for accommodation earlier.
• Organise better so that we can get required information easily.
• Similar good organisation and quality.
• Please give list of attendees.

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Papers

• Increase page length to 6 or 8 pages.
• Authors need more info before arriving. We were not told how long the presentations were. We were not told what equipment would be available etc.
• In call for papers encourage data where appropriate (be explicit).
• Would hope for more diverse papers (but realise this has to do with submissions).
• Perhaps 20 minutes speaking/5 minutes questions?

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Programme

• Ad hoc sessions seem a good idea. Maybe they need to be publicised better (or did I miss something?).
• Continue the papers and posters.
• Continue the main session keynote speakers.
• Provide an opportunity (time) to meet in small BOF sessions e.g. Project Management, databases etc. to share teaching tips.
• Maintain the standards. Do not have too many parallel sessions.
• Add 5 minutes to presentations, many were rushed. It takes 5 minutes to set up projectors and boot software if used.
• More Tips & Techniques sessions - 2?
• Keep the Tips & Techniques session, please!
• Tips & Techniques and Ad Hoc sessions should both continue.
• Some way that people with ideas (project, research, development) can get in contact, for example: wallpaper, little sessions open for presentation of ideas (5 mins each).
• Institutionalise Ad Hoc sessions.

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Working Groups

• Could we use the tools we talk about in order to largely complete the Working Group activities in advance making it possible to feature the results more fully at the Conference?
• Include reports from the Working Groups and experts in the Working Group areas .
• Keep Working Group feedback session.
• Joe Bergin should give orientations to working group leaders.

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