WACI @ ASPLOS 2024

The Wild and Crazy Ideas (WACI) session is a time-honored tradition at ASPLOS that frees researchers from the shackles of realism, removes the blinders of short-term thinking, and opens the scientific mind to uncharted frontiers. Since 1998, WACI has provided a counterweight to the conservative impulses wrought by the traditional peer review path.

This is your moment to propose something huge—something no one else is talking about. Craft a talk that:

• Falls within the ASPLOS purview and is related to architecture, programming languages, and operating systems in some capacity. Interdisciplinary ideas that touch on multiple topics are preferred, but not required.
• Is not (yet) publishable research. Propose something neither you nor anyone else in the community is actually working on—for example, because it seems only barely feasible, because it requires thinking far into the future, because it strays into intellectual domains too far from core ASPLOS expertise, or because it directly contradicts the conventional wisdom.
• Might change the world. Your idea must be enormous. Unshackle your ambition.
• Ideas may also be funny—we encourage it!—but really great WACI talks contain an element of real, world-changing, convention-challenging research thought.

This year, we’re soliciting submissions as short videos. Think of this as a beta-quality teaser for what your real, on-stage talk would be like. Upload a video at most 5 minutes in length to the submission form by March 16 (AoE). We will select talks based on their potential to provoke thoughts and discussion, not their production value—so it’s OK to submit a rough prototype.

If the WACI chairs select your talk, here’s what you can expect:

1. You write a longer version of your idea (limit: two pages) for publication on the WACI website.
2. The WACI chairs work with you to craft an excellent, compact, entertaining talk for the WACI session.

Contact the WACI chairs, Sara Achour and Mangpo Phothilimthana, with any questions.