Thanks Mikael! I am signed up for the list now and very happy to be part of this. :-)
Martin, if I may, I'd like to address some of your concerns in the paragraphs below because they are really good points. We wanted a track instead of a day for the SWG because last year we spent all of Thursday in the science talks and missed many important talks from the rest of the community. We believe we will minimize this overlap if we spread it across the conference, which might also attract more people. It also gives us the opportunity to have more than six talks.
We should also develop good criteria for the PC to judge the science proposals we receive. I don't think it is worth judging them on their scientific merit per se. This isn't a scientific conference. Instead, I think we should focus on things like novelty and relevance to the Eclipse Community as a whole (n.b. - community, not "platform"), among others. I am happy to create a draft minimal set of criteria and share it for further development, if you want.
