European Conferences on Programming Languages and Programming
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The situation concerning European conferences in the areas of
Programming Languages, Semantics, and Programming is not
satisfactory. Different groups of scientists have established
conference and workshop series which compete for a too small market.
From these only ICALP has a (more or less) permanent carrier,
i.e. the EATCS. The others were established by ESPRIT projects or
Basic Research Actions, groups in or among the national computer
science organizations, or just groups of cooperating individuals.


ICALP (International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and
Programming) is the most established series; however, in the course 
of time it has suffered several turns of focus. The last conferences
were dominated by papers on algorithms and complexity; few papers
had to do with automata, some with semantics of programming languages,
and none with programming.

ESOP (European Symposium on Programming) has been established in
1985 and been organized 1986 (Saarbruecken), 1988 (Nancy), 1990
(Copenhagen), and 1992 (Rennes). It has its strong areas in semantics,
types, and functional programming.

PLILP (Programming Language Implementation and Logic Programming)
It has been organized in 1988 (Orleans), 1990 (Linkoeping),
Passau (1991), Leuven (1992). The strive for a palindromic
name has caused a bias towards logic programming mixed with a certain
amount of implementation matters. 

CC (Compiler Construction) is the continuation of a workshop series
in the former German Democratic Republic. Its 1992 instance is run
in Paderborn. It is completely devoted to language implementation.

PARLE (Parallel Architectures and Languages Europe) is organized
in Eindhoven by Philips. It takes place in odd years since 1987.
As the name states, it covers the combination of parallel languages
and architectures.

TAPSOFT (Theory and Practice of Software ...)
The attempt to stretch from theory to practice has worked with
different amount of success, i.e. between 60 and 500 participants.

ALP (Algebraic and Logic Programming)


The competition of too many conferences for a rather small supply
of scientific results has prevented any of the series to really
reach a high international standing. Frankly stated,
ESOP never really makes it to the POPL level,
PLILP never to the level of ICLP,
CC never to that of ACM SIGPLAN PLDI,
etc.

This is made even worse, when two of the conferences fix their
deadline to the same day, e.g. March 1, 1992 for CC'92 and PLILP'92.

Organizational Framework
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In Europe, we miss the strong support given by ACM and IEEE to their
international conference series. We lack their boards who feel
responsible, their professional staff with all the experience
gathered through the years. The organization of our conferences
is usually based on selfless efforts by some engaged scientists.
There is no continuity, no support by some organization, neither
financial nor administrative. 
The situation in other areas of computer science is quite comparable.

How to change things
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1. We should stop to split a rather small cake into too many pieces;
that is we should join efforts and merge some of the series. This
should produce the critical mass for a conference competitive with
the Big ones in the USA.

2. We have to find some means to provide continuity for the series.
This could be some scientific organization like or similar to EATCS
or at least a steering group of colleagues feeling some responsibility
for the fate of the series.  These colleagues should encourage others
to submit and to attend, and think about directions and perspectives.


3. We should try to find a financial underpinning. This can only
come from ESPRIT as far as I see. The "Human Capital and Mobility"
programme may be a starting point. In this programme, there is support
offered for socalled Euroconferences. Funding is provided for 
fellowships for young promising scientists attending conferences
plus some management costs. This is not much, but more than nothing.

An application for that program needs an established legal body, 
who is able to sign contracts with the CEC. 

The Council of European Professional Informatics Organisation (CEPIS)
could be such an umbrella for the European language conferences. It is 
meant to be a Professionals' society as the name says. 

At a meeting of the program commitee of PLILP`92 we discussed these 
matters. There was a strong preference towards the foundation of
some European Association for Languages and Programming, something
similar to EATCS. In addition it was decided to set up a mailing
list to discuss the situation and ways to improve it.

	Reinhard Wilhelm
	Saarbr"ucken
        wilhelm@de.uni-sb.cs.rw-elc
	August 1992