Call for Tutorial Proposals

by Daniel V. Klein
Tutorials Coordinator
<[email protected]>

In an effort to continue to provide the best possible tutorials to its membership, the USENIX Association is soliciting proposals for future tutorials. The tutorial proposals can cover any subject, ranging from reasonably introductory to advanced materials, although one should avoid overly generalized introductory materials (thus, a one-day tutorial on "Introduction to C Programming" is not the sort of thing we are usually looking for). Previous conferences have included tutorials on such diverse topics as UNIX Network Programming, High Availability, Topics in System Administration, Multi-Threaded Programming, UNIX Kernel Internals, Performance Tuning & Monitoring, Security, and Software Contracts & Intellectual Property, among many others.

In general, we like to categorize our tutorials as "introductory tutorials for advanced people," but some are "Advanced tutorials for advanced people." Tutorial instructors are remunerated for their presentations and have their conference registration and reasonable expenses paid for.

Tutorials usually run for a full day (six hours of class time plus morning, lunch, and afternoon breaks), although the smaller symposia and the LISA conference also hold half-day (three-hour) tutorials. Your proposal should include a statement of what you want to teach and a coherent outline of your tutorial—not simply a list of what you want to cover, but the order in which you want to cover it, with an estimate of the amount of time for each subject. We need to know that you can comfortably fill the time but not overfill it (i.e., that you won't discover at 4:30 that you have another three hours of slides left to present). Knowing in advance that you'll run until 6 p.m. is fine, so long as you warn your students ahead of time. Running until 7 p.m., though, almost guarantees that you will have unhappy students. If you have any supplementary materials to distribute (copies of papers, shell, Tcl, or Perl scripts, source code, illustrations, etc.), indicate the volume of supplementary material, along with a rough count of the number of slides you will be presenting during class. (Historically, a typical tutorial takes between 75 and 200 slides, optionally with up to 200 pages of supplementary material). If possible, include a couple of sample slides (one with text, one with a graphic) with your proposal. If you have already written a complete or draft course, a copy of the current materials would be useful.

If you will be presenting or distributing any source code, we need to know whether it is copyrighted by someone other than you. If you do not hold the copyright, you must be able to demonstrate that you have permission to use this material (we want to avoid requiring course attendees to have a source license). Because the USENIX tutorials fall outside of the "fair use" clause of the U.S. copyright code, the same rules apply for supplementary papers or reports.

Finally, your proposal should also include a summary of your previous teaching or lecturing experience, as well as a couple of references (that is, one or two people who have seen you teach that we can contact). These may be your students, supervisors, or colleagues.

Remember, this is just a proposal, so nothing you submit will cast in concrete. You may later decide to change some ordering of materials, or we may suggest some changes. You needn't worry about getting it perfect the first time around. What we are trying to do is get a very solid feel for what you are offering. You must sweat out some of the details, but needn't go too crazy over them.

All tutorial proposals are kept in mind when the tutorial program is chosen for a major USENIX conference or for one of our smaller workshops or symposia. If you feel that your proposal would be especially suited for a particular venue, please note that in your cover letter. Please send your proposals to [email protected], or by physical mail to:

Daniel Klein, USENIX Tutorial Coordinator
5606 Northumberland,
Pittsburgh, PA 15217-1238

Be sure to include both an electronic and a physical address and a phone number. All proposals will be acknowledged upon receipt.