To all those who attended the MICRO business meeting diversity discussion and/or have followed it on this blog/twitter, we wanted to provide an update to the MICRO and broader computer architecture communities as to the next steps.
First off, we want to thank everyone who participated in the diversity discussion and expressed their thoughts. It was by far the largest crowd that has ever attended a MICRO business meeting! More importantly, the discussion was both productive and insightful. Not only did MICRO regulars speak up, but the discussion was joined by a good number of students, which made it all the more useful.
We take the discussion and need to take action very seriously. Here is a list of the initial steps that will be taken. Note that this list is intentionally incomplete. New steps will be added as these complete and provide new action items.
- Post business meeting slides and diversity discussion notes.
Target: Nov 2017
Status: Complete and available:
https://www.microarch.org/businessmtg/micro50/micro2017-business_meeting-final.pdf, https://www.microarch.org/businessmtg/micro50/micro2017-business_meeting_notes.pdf - Create and distribute survey for the community to collect ideas on how to enhance diversity and inclusion in MICRO.
Target: Survey out Dec 2017, Survey complete Jan 31, 2018
Status: In progress. A draft survey is available and we are in the process of soliciting feedback to refine. - Analysis of diversity survey results
Target: Spring 2018, post summary of survey and action items
Status: Not started - Form new MICRO Steering Committee in consultation with sponsoring organizations
Target: January-February 2018
Status: In progress - Complete discussions with MICRO sponsoring organizations on guiding principles for conference governance
Target: February-March 2018
Status: Initial discussion with SIGMICRO and TCuarch Executive Committees held Nov 17, 2017
We invite feedback from the community, so if you have have any comments or suggestions, please follow up with public comments on the blog itself or via email at microsc-chair@umich.edu. Thanks in advance for your feedback.
About the Authors: Scott Mahlke is a Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the University of Michigan. Onur Mutlu is a Professor of Computer Science at ETH Zurich and Adjunct Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. Scott and Onur are the new MICRO Steering Committee Co-Chairs and are committed to making MICRO a diverse and inclusive conference for the entire community.
Disclaimer: These posts are written by individual contributors to share their thoughts on the Computer Architecture Today blog for the benefit of the community. Any views or opinions represented in this blog are personal, belong solely to the blog author and do not represent those of ACM SIGARCH or its parent organization, ACM.
