The goal of this workshop is to bring together the implementors of a variety of languages with advanced type systems. The main focus is on the practical issues that come up in the implementation of these systems, rather than the theoretical frameworks that underlie them. In particular, we want to encourage exchanging ideas between the communities around specific systems that would otherwise be accessible to only a very select group.
- WITS'25: Planned to be co-located with POPL'25 in Denver, CO on 25 January 2025
- WITS'24: Co-located with POPL'24 in London, UK on 20 January 2024
- WITS'23: Co-located with IFL'23 in Braga, Portugal on 28 August 2023
- WITS'22: Co-located with POPL'22 in Philadelphia, PA, USA on 22 January 2022
These rules, as agreed upon by the Steering Committee (described below) govern WITS.
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Location. WITS is co-located with POPL, held in January every year.
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Program Committee Chair. Each year, either during or soon after POPL, the Steering Committee chooses a PC Chair to invite to organize the next iteration of WITS.
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Program Committee. The PC Chair chooses researchers and implementers to comprise the Program Committee. After coming up with an initial provisional list, the PC Chair shares the list with the Steering Committee for feedback, and then submits this list as part of the Workshops Form to the POPL organizers.
After WITS is accepted for co-location with POPL, the PC chair invites committee members from the list. The final committee, including the chair, comprises between 6 and 9 members.
A goal of assembling the PC is diversity, along at least these axes:
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Geography: the PC should, at a minimum, contain members from both North America and Europe. Ideally, it would also include at least one member from neither North America nor Europe. The ideal committee does not contain more than one member from the same country (except that 3 from the USA is OK).
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Language specialty: the PC should contain people associated with a variety of language communities. The PC should include folks from both dependently typed languages and non-dependently typed languages, from both pure languages and impure languages, and from both languages with relative widespread use and newer ones.
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Seniority: the PC should contain both well-established researcher/implementers and more junior members. No more than one member can be in the process of earning a PhD. Members without an earned or prospective PhD must have a public profile and be well-respected in their language community.
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Affiliation: the PC should have a mix of academics and industrialists.
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Identity: the PC should contain a mix of ethnicities and genders.
These goals are aspirational, but the PC Chair should take them into account when forming the prospective list and in inviting individual members (once some decline the invitation).
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Call for Participation. The CfP should be based on the previous year's CfP. A PC Chair is invited to clarify wording and make small edits, but substantive changes (e.g. new submission categories) should be approved by the Steering Committee.
The Steering Committee assists the Program Committee chair in planning and executing the yearly occurrence of WITS. The Steering Committee can be reached at wits-steering@googlegroups.com.
The Steering Committee comprises the following members:
- The chair of the upcoming WITS.
- The most recent three chairs of WITS.
- 2 at-large members, each of whom serve 4 year terms
The current membership of the Steering Committee is:
- Jesper Cockx (co-chair 2022, chair 2023; membership expires after POPL'26)
- Richard Eisenberg (co-chair 2022, chair 2024; membership expires after POPL'27)
- Sebastian Ullrich (chair 2025; membership expires after POPL'28)
- Stephanie Weirich (at-large member; membership expires after POPL'26)
- Xavier Leroy (at-large member; membership expires after POPL'28)
One former chair position will be vacant until after POPL'25.
The former WITS chair who will next leave the committee is the chair of the Steering Committee. At present, the chair is Jesper Cockx. The chair is responsible for initiating a process (ideally an in-person meeting at POPL) to choose the next PC Chair and, in even years, at-large member of the Steering Committee. If the SC Chair cannot attend POPL but wishes to support an in-person meeting at POPL, they can delegate the organizational task as they see fit.