Seminar overview
In this seminar we will be discussing the state-of-the-art of
systems research. This is a great way to learn
technical matters but also how to do systems research!
This semester we are going to mostly focus on papers from OSDI, SOSP, EuroSys, and ASPLOS,
where some of the best systems, systems security, and
architecture work is published, so there is always a lot to learn
from these papers.
We meet once a week for one hour and have an informal
discussion about the papers –
this is not a course, and you will not get credits for it, but you will
probably learn a lot.
Make sure you subscribe to the seminar mailing list to ensure that you get notifications about paper discussions.
Guidelines for everyone
To participate in the seminar there are a couple of expectations for every
participant that help ensure we have lively and informative discussions:
- ATTENDANCE
Attend (almost) all seminar meetings (meetings are on Monday @
10:30am-11:30am).
- READING
Read the papers beforehand; typically 1 paper per
meeting.
- PARTICIPATION
Actively participate in the seminar discussion and lead the
discussion of a couple of papers.
Please send me an
email
if you are interested in participating or have questions about the seminar.
Guidelines for discussion leads
As a discussion lead your primary goal is to foster and manage the paper discussion.
This requires understanding well the material,
preparing some slides, managing time, and managing the discussion during the seminar.
Please try to follow the following guidelines when leading the discussion:
- SLIDES Avoid using the author slides.
Author slides tend to be about
selling their own work and tend to sweep under the rug the limitations.
In addition, each presenter has his own presentation style so it is never ideal to use
someone else's slides.
- STRUCTURE You are free to decide how to structure the
talk, but you are encouraged to
prepare 15-20 slides. Avoid spending more than 20-30 minutes talking
so that there is
enough time left for discussion.
In addition, it is important to prepare questions
and discussion points ahead of time to foster interesting discussions.
Your short presentation should clearly highlight:
(a) which problem the authors are solving,
(b) why this problem is important,
(c) how they tried to solved the problem and how it relates to previous approaches, and
(d) how well did they solve the problem.
- SETUP Please make sure to arrive early
and test the screen casting
ahead of time (e.g., 5-10 minutes) to avoid delays.
Tentative Schedule