Dear CCC and PC members, 

Thank you very much for your support over the past weeks (especially during the holidays!). At this point, the reviewers have already been actively engaging in re-evaluating the submissions based on the authors’ responses so that everything is running according to plan. A really hot phase for the PC will begin in February with the discussion of the program. One of the reasons why the finalization of the program might be rather tricky is that a lot of submissions have received very different grades so that the range between the grades for the same submission often exceeds 20 points and can go up to 60 points. Maybe in the current adjustment phase the gap will be reduced, but we will still have some pondering to do in the end.

That being said, Walter was kind enough to sum up the first projections in terms of how many parallel sessions we could accommodate. In terms of space, we are quite free. The Messe (i.e. the Graz Congress Center) provides room for more parallel sessions than we would actually like to have. One particularly nice feature of the location is that it has a very large room located between two sections of the Messe - some kind of corridor if you want -, with glass walls, that would be extremely suitable to display posters and would allow for the posters to remain there during the whole conference, which we think would be really nice.

In the following googlesheet, you can find:

• The number of presentations that can be delivered, depending on the number of parallel tracks (each cell presents two options: long papers and short papers)

• The percentage of acceptance to which this corresponds for each submission track

• A tentative program (which we also would have to discuss even though this is less urgent)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NNlnffSBvl-prg1RhslRPwVx8saUAm7lNXS5zMrss_k/edit?usp=sharing

For instance, Cell D2 means that in the case of 5 parallel tracks, we can accommodate in the corresponding slots 20 long papers or 60 short papers for an acceptance rate around 25%.

The idea of these projections is to give us a sense of the type of selection we are going to have to engage in when preparing the program. Toma and I would like to stay below 8 parallel tracks at this point, allowing for a better overview of the program, but we would be grateful for any feedback from you and will do our best to incorporate your input in the next phase.

All best,

Anne and Toma

-- 
Anne Baillot
Professeure en Etudes Germaniques
Faculté de Lettres, Langues et Sciences Humaines
Département d'allemand
Université du Mans
Avenue Olivier Messiaen 
F-72085 LE MANS Cedex 9

CV et publications: https://cv.archives-ouvertes.fr/annebaillot
Sur twitter: @AnneBaillot