Spring 2025 Awards Gala + Org Updates

April 25, 2025

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Good afternoon everyone!

If you’re seeing this, that means that I have successfully made the blog for our organization! I wanted to send out a preliminary email to recap the results of our awards gala, as well as the discussed changes to ΔΛΔ leadership and meeting structure (yes, it’s a bit of a long one, but bear with me).

Awards Gala Results

Please see below for the finalized votes for the Spring 2025 PL Reading Group Awards Gala

• Through the Looking Glass - Knuth–Morris–Pratt illustrated
• The Librarian - Choral: Object-oriented Choreographic Programming
• The Hat-Trick - Decidable Subtyping of Existential Types for Julia
• Homework Required - Message-Observing Sessions
• The Lemon - The Ultimate Conditional Syntax
• The Catalyst - Staged Compilation with Module Functors

Leadership Updates

After some discussion in today’s meeting, we have now officially adjusted the bylaws of our organization to add a new leadership position, Secretary, which will log important meeting notes, keeping all active members up to date on ΔΛΔ news and events, and ensure the president effectively delegates responsibilities to the other leadership members (cough, Peter). This new position will be filled by myself (hence me sending this email).

Organization Updates

As is tradition at the end of the Awards Gala, we discussed potential changes to the structure and procedure of the reading group. Below are the changes that got passed:

• There should be open, frequent communication to all members outside of the Discord server we already host. Our solution to address this is two-fold: 1. set up an Outlook group with all current and prospective members to keep them informed of current happenings, and 2. set up a blog section on the ΔΛΔ site to mirror these emails (and serve as an archive of communication).
• Due to the lackluster and hand-waved selection of awards this semester, we will be reverting back to awards selection on the first official meeting of each term. In this, each currently active member must bring exactly one award to this meeting, new or old, so we can vote on the final awards for the end of term.
• As discussed earlier in the semester, we aim to change where the papers we read are source, with the aim to select shorter papers that still hold the same quality as the ones being selected from the current SIGPLAN conferences we pool from.
• Finally, we will be putting a system in place to promote more lively discussion on the paper selected. The system is as follows: every week, before the paper options are listed, two current graduate members are selected at random that will argue either in support or against the paper that will be selected. These members must come prepared to argue their point, with failure to do so resulting in a sanction on the member in the form of forcing them to continue to be in the supporting/opposing role until they sufficiently serve this role.

TL;DR

• We held the awards gala today, see above for the awarded papers.
• We created the role of secretary, with the task of pestering members about news and upholding tasks, which I will be filling.
• We are creating new communication channels through email and the website to give all members access to relevant information.
• Award selection for the Fall term will be held at the first official meeting, with every current member required to bring exactly one new or old award category.
• We will be shifting the paper selection pool away from SIGPLAN conferences in an effort to select more concise papers.
• We will be implementing a system to randomly select two members to argue in support and opposition before paper selection each week. Failure to effectively do so will result in having to continue to support/oppose the proceeding papers until effective.

If you actually read all that, thank you! Future blog posts will hopefully be much more concise; I just wanted to cover everything important discussed in today’s meeting. Have a good Summer and see you all next Fall!