Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2001 00:46:24 -0400 (EDT)
From: "A. Bruce McDonald" <mcdonald@ECE.NEU.EDU>
To: Anders Andersson <andersa@DoCS.UU.SE>
cc: help@ECE.NEU.EDU
Subject: Re: 129.10.60.82
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.4.21.0109252332040.15428-100000@radha.it.uu.se>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.21.0109252325110.18560-100000@runner>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Length: 2524


Dear Mr. Andersson,

I apologize for the inconvenience. It is normal procedure to attempt to
broadly advertise young conferences in the hope of attracting good
research and building new international collaboration or other
relationships.

You are of course correct that the list, which consisted of the
concatenation of several senior faculty members lists from both the US and
Europe, did not only contain previous attendees of this
conference. However, Rajiv would not have known this and was not trying to
mislead you---this of course is obvious.

The addresses from your Institution were obtained from the following URL:
http://www.uu.se/Adresser/Directory/deps/X61.html#X61:2
which contains addresses for the entire Computer and Info Tech Dept. I
guess this includes 'janitors' as well who maynot be too interested in the
conference:-).  No harm was intended, we were only trying to find
interested people at top schools in various under-represented
nations.  Furthermore, it is very naieve to assume that an overloaded
faculty member will act as the point-of-contact and re-distribute in a
fine grained manner.  One must paint with a broad brush unless you are
already recognized as a Volvo versus a Yugo. Without mass mailings only
Infocom, Sigcommm and Mobicom would receive more than 10 submissions (in
my field).  

Being a Conference Program Chair is not about SPAM---it is about working
several hundred hours without compensation in order to build relationships
and advance the science and opportunities for interested academics, and
find the best possible contributions from around the world.

I don't believe that anyone asked you to neglect your job because 6400
people are buried under millions of tons of twisted steel, concrete and
glass.  The murderer who flew the first plane into the WTC stayed in a
motel down the street from me---I pass it on the way to work many
mornings.  Perhaps I even passed him that very day.  My work
continues--and I am have received papers submitted from Iran, Jourdan and
Yemen----as well as China and many from Europe and the USA.  As my work
continues so must yours---but keep things in perspective and take more
time with your family and less time tracking down CFPs. Incidently, it is
SOP to send three: Announcement, Reminder and Final Call.

I am removing all Upsalla addresses from the list. If you also want me to
remove the other addresses in Sweden please let me know. I hope this
resolves your concerns.

Life is short, enjoy it.

Prof. A. Bruce McDonald