SOSP Professional Travel Scholarship: Reflections by Recipient William Tetzlaff

I was delighted that the ACM extended the professional travel program to create an Emeritus-Discount on the SOSP registration, particularly since it was driving distance for me, and would have been a shame to miss. I also attended the Sunday workshop on non-volatile memory. I have been an ACM member pretty continuously since I was an Undergraduate at Northwestern, in the early 1960s. During my carrier I participated in many ACM program committees, and conferences, but my favorite has always been SOSP. During my carrier at IBM I spent a sabbatical at UC Berkeley CS, and being in the Research Division, was following university research, mainly systems, for decades. Visiting Universities, going to conferences, especially SOSP ” meeting the Faculty and Graduate students and seeing their research projects, was part of my role at IBM, but also just great fun. I enjoyed finding the projects that related to IBM work, and getting people connected. I fondly remember many SOSP conferences, and the graduate students I met for the first time, and later hired. When I retired, then the Past President of the IBM Academy of Technology, I was invited, as one of the senior scientists, to continue as an Emeritus Distinguished Engineer. It makes for a nice transition into mostly retirement, but I also continue to have a role in the research, and keep track of projects I am interested in. It also let’s me continue to play my role as a matchmaker between researchers at IBM and in Academia, and look for promising graduate students who might want to work at IBM research. I also continue to be active in the ACM, as a member of the Professional Development Committee, and am on some university advisory boards. Attending SOSP fit very well with my situation as an Emeritus at IBM. I saw many interesting presentations and poster sessions. In some cases they were in areas where I have worked over the years, and I feel I was able to provide some historical context for the people doing the work. Knowing about work in IBM, as well as other universities, I was also able to suggest to the people I met, other work that I thought would interest them, and in some cases provided email introductions. I had attended the SOSP at Big Sky, at my expense, Emeritus, Retired academics and industrial researchers don’t have grant money with travel, or a corporate expense account. I combined it with vacation time in Yellowstone, the Teatons, and Jackson, and just barely justified the extra, quite high cost of the SOSP conference. Hopefully SOSP, and other conferences, will value having older researchers, who are still active, with connections to other university or corporate research, but are no longer coming ”free” because their job pays for it, and have a long connection with ACM and the particular conference. I fully expect to pay for lodging and transportation, and turn the trip into a bit of vacation travel, but help on the high cost of the conference itself is a big help. The economics of a conference require considerable guarantee of guests, and cost of meeting rooms and food, but the incremental cost of an additional Emeritus/Retired or Student, is much less than the average cost. I think it has value, similar to student discounts and stipends for travel and hope that the ACM will more generally create conference discounts for Emeritus/Retired members.