[CSDM] Fwd: TCS+ announcement

[Ankur Moitra]

Hi All,

FYI, Thomas, Oded and Anindya are organizing an exciting new seminar  
that will be run entirely online, and is patterned after some highly  
successful ones in quantum computing. Take a look at the announcement  
below!

Best,
Ankur

----- Forwarded message from Thomas Vidick <thomas.vidick at gmail.com> -----
    Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2013 17:00:43 -0500
    From: Thomas Vidick <thomas.vidick at gmail.com>
Subject: TCS+ announcement
      To: Ankur Moitra <moitra at ias.edu>

Hi Ankur,

Oded, Anindya and I wrote up a little announcement for the TCS+ seminars.
Do you think you could forward it to the appropriate list at IAS (and maybe
also Princeton?). We're planning to ask to have it posted on a couple blogs
as well.

Thanks,
Thomas

-----------
Dear fellow TCSers,

Ever wished you could attend that talk -- if only you didn't have to hike
the Rockies, or swim across the Atlantic, to get there; if only it could
have been scheduled the following week, because this week is finals; if
only you could watch it from your desk, or for that matter directly from
your bed?

Starting this semester TCS+ will solve all your worries. We are delighted
to announce the initiation of a new series of *online* seminars in
theoretical computer science. The seminars will be run using the "hangout"
feature of Google+. The speaker and slides will be broadcast live as well
as recorded and made available online. Anyone with a computer (and a decent
browser) can watch; anyone with a webcam can join the live audience and
participate.

Our goal is to make engaging talks accessible to the widest possible
audience, ensuring a carbon-free dissemination of ideas across the globe.

We're still in beta, and we welcome any feedback from the community. There
will undoubtedly be glitches at first, but we hope you'll bear with us and
be as excited as we are at trying out the possibilities of this new medium.


Now for some more practical information:

Inauguration talk
------------------
Speaker: Ronald de Wolf, CWI, Amsterdam.
Title: Exponential Lower Bounds for Polytopes in Combinatorial Optimization.
(Based on the paper from STOC'12 with Samuel Fiorini, Serge Massar,
Sebastian Pokutta and Hans Raj Tiwary that won the best paper award.)
Date: Wednesday 2013/2/6
Time: 5pm UTC (that's 9am PST, noon EST, and 6pm CET).

Following talks
----------------------
We initially plan to hold one seminar every two weeks. The second seminar
will take place on February 20th and be given by Anup Rao from University
of Washington. The next speaker will be Raghu Meka from IAS on March 6th.

We welcome suggestions for speakers! Feel free to email us or post
suggestions directly on the TCS+ community page on Google+.

How to join?
------------------
If you have a Google+ account, simply add the "TCS+" community to one of
your circles. For more technical information, see our webpage at
https://sites.google.com/site/plustcs/. We'll keep updating it as the first
seminar comes closer.

Google hangouts can only accommodate 10 "active" participants
simultaneously. Active participants are those who are part of the live
hangout, and can ask questions through the video feed; others can watch,
and ask questions by posting text comments. We encourage groups to join
together as active participants by organizing an independent "viewing
party". Priority will be given to such groups. To reserve one of the 10
available spots, post a comment in reply to the talk announcement on
Google+.

Practice run
------------------
We will have a practice "hangout" two days before the first seminar, Monday
2013/2/4, as 5pm UTC. It will be announced on the Google+ page. The goal is
to allow anyone (including us!) to test the hangout feature and their own
technical equipment.

More information
-----------------------
We have a website https://sites.google.com/site/plustcs/ where you'll also
find a calendar of future seminars to which you can subscribe. We also
included more technical information for the speakers and the audience.
Please post further questions directly on the TCS+ page on Google+ so that
they are visible to everyone.

Precedents
----------------
For the curious, the idea for this series came in part from a similar such
series that's been successfully running for over a year in quantum
information. It's called Q+, and you can find more information on their
website (including videos of previous talks) here
https://sites.google.com/site/plusquant/ or on their Google+ page.


Looking forward to seeing you all online soon,

The organizers,
Anindya De, Oded Regev and Thomas Vidick

----- End forwarded message -----