--- name: socc-workflow description: Use when planning an ACM SoCC project timeline from venue fit through the two-round abstract+paper deadlines, the rebuttal, notification, camera-ready, and presentation, with backward-planning offsets for a cloud-systems measurement paper and honest handling of the two-rounds-per-year cadence and the no-cross-round-resubmission rule. --- # SoCC Workflow Use this as the project-management skill for a SoCC submission. Replace every date with the current official timetable and work backwards from the **round's abstract-registration cutoff** — which precedes the paper deadline by about a week. SoCC — the ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing, jointly sponsored by SIGMOD and SIGOPS — runs **two review rounds per year**, so the first planning decision is *which round* you are genuinely ready for. SoCC is a conference with **no standing editor-in-chief**; its rotating leadership is the per-edition **General Chair(s)** and **Program Committee Co-Chairs** appointed under SIGMOD and SIGOPS (SoCC 2026 PC Co-Chairs reported as Eric Lo and Ivan Beschastnikh, verified 2026-07-09 via committee-page rendering; confirm on the live page). The cost model is conference registration; at least one author presents. ## Milestones - **Venue fit:** confirm SoCC over OSDI/NSDI/EuroSys/ATC and over SIGMOD/VLDB (`socc-topic-selection`), and confirm the contribution spans the systems-and-data intersection. - **Evidence lock:** freeze the system/mechanism, the testbed or trace, the workloads, the baselines, and the measurement pipeline. - **Round choice:** pick Round 1 or Round 2 knowing a Round-1 reject **cannot** be resubmitted to Round 2 the same year. - **Abstract registration:** submit real title, abstract, authors, subject tags, and conflicts by the round's abstract cutoff. - **Submission:** upload the anonymized acmart PDF and (where possible) the artifact link by the round's paper deadline (AoE). - **Rebuttal:** during the round's author-response window, answer reviewers on the axes they raised. - **Notification:** accept / reject for that round; archive reviews, rebuttal, and every version. - **Acceptance:** prepare the camera-ready, pursue ACM artifact badges if the edition offers evaluation, register, and present in Singapore (SoCC 2026). ## Backward plan from a round's paper deadline | Weeks out (heuristic) | Cloud-systems milestone | |---|---| | 10+ | System/mechanism feature-frozen; testbed or trace and baselines chosen | | 8 | Experiments running; measurement harness logs throughput, latency, tail, and cost | | 6 | Analysis done; cost-latency and tail results computed; baselines tuned with a documented budget | | 4 | Full draft in acmart sigconf; artifact (trace-replay/testbed scripts) assembled and anonymized | | 3 | Internal mock review by a systems reader and a data/measurement reader | | 2 | Tail and cost results hardened; related-work delta sharpened; 12-page budget met | | 1 | Dual-anonymous sweep on PDF and artifact (traces, cluster names, system names) | | 0 | Abstract registered by its earlier cutoff, then paper + artifact link on HotCRP | These offsets are planning heuristics only — anchor every one to the current Important Dates / HotCRP deadlines page, never to a previous cycle's calendar. ## Two-rounds-per-year: the honest calendar reality SoCC's twin-round model is a genuine advantage and a trap: - **Advantage:** there are **two shots per calendar year** at the same venue (a winter/February round and a summer/July round for SoCC 2026), so a paper that misses one round is only months from the next. - **Trap:** a paper **rejected in Round 1 may not be resubmitted to Round 2** the same year, so a rushed Round-1 submission does not buy a discounted retry — it costs you the year at SoCC. Submit to the round you can make *strong*, not merely the nearer one. - As of 2026-07-09, the live target is **SoCC 2026 Round 2** (paper 14 Jul 2026); Round 1 (13 Feb 2026) has passed. ## Failure modes by stage - **Evidence still moving at week 4** forces last-minute measurement nobody has audited — the classic soundness reject for a systems paper. - **Simulation-only at submission** invites the "does it hold on a real testbed?" reject from both sponsoring communities. - **Reporting only the mean** — omitting tail latency and cost — reads as not understanding what a cloud paper is judged on. - **Leaving the anonymized trace/artifact to the final week** is how a cluster name or provider hint leaks identity under dual-anonymous review. - **Treating Round 1 as a free draft** and getting rejected forfeits the whole SoCC year. ## Coordination notes - Assign one owner for the measurement harness and reproducibility package and another for the dual-anonymous sweep; shared ownership is how both slip. - Archive the exact submitted PDF and artifact — the rebuttal must quote the paper precisely and stay anonymous. ## Output format ```text [Current stage] idea / evidence / round-choice / submitted / rebuttal / accepted [Target round] round 1 / round 2, with the next official deadline and source [Critical path] [Risk register] [Owner map] person or role> ```