The deadline for Main Program submissions has passed with a near-record number of submissions!

The conference organizers are grateful for, and excited about, the almost-two-hundred submissions that we received. We are excited both by the quality of the submissions and by the fact that that the vast majority of submissions were for onsite presentations.

Our Program Committee is currently hard at work reviewing and rating each submission and we know that we’ll have an amazing program for both onsite and online attendees in Aurora in October. As you know, we’ve announced that Bjarne will be our opening keynote onsite. (We are anxious to make our next onsite keynote announcement but that isn’t quite ready yet.)

A peek behind the curtain for those of you that have not been part of the submission/review process: Each submission receives written evaluations by several members of the CppCon Program Committee. There are two goals of each committee member as they draft these evaluations. The most obvious is to select the best possible program for CppCon attendees. On the one hand, this is easy because with so many high-quality submissions, creating a great program comes out pretty naturally, but on the other hand, it is very hard because we know that our audience has come to have great expectations of a CppCon program, not just that every individual sessions is of high quality, but that the program as a whole provides coverage of the topics that matter to our attendees, and also because the competition is fierce. The quality of the submissions that we don’t accept is getting higher every year.

Which leads us to the second goal of members as they draft their evaluations. The evaluations are, of course, shared with the submitters, so each evaluation should also contain constructive advice on how to improve the submission. For submissions that are accepted, this leads to an even better program for attendees. For submissions that are not accepted, this leads to better submissions to future programs (both at CppCon and other conferences).

Our feeling is that all submissions, from the weakest to the strongest, can be improved in some way and comments that we’ve received from submitters (both those that have been accepted and those that have not) let us know that submitters appreciate thoughtful, constructive comments.

Creating multiple, thoughtful evaluations on almost two-hundred submissions touching on virtually every topic of C++ and software design in less than a month is a mammoth task, but we know that the CppCon 2021 Program that you’ll be seeing in Aurora and/or online, will be something that we as organizers, the Program Committee, and the presenters, will be proud to present.