EZ-PC: program committee selection made easy

Abstract

Selecting a technical program committee (PC) for a conference or a workshop can be an intimidating and time consuming process. PC selection needs to balance several potential considerations; e.g., industry vs. academic participation, inclusion of under-represented communities, ensuring coverage over topic areas, among others. This paper presents the design of an open-source tool called EZ-PC which formulates these considerations as a simple constraint satisfaction problem to help PC chairs systematize this selection process. We report on some of the features we have incorporated and our experience in using the tool.