In 2023, SIGCOMM, together with many members of our community, launched a “Call for Change” in response to both longstanding challenges and new pressures arising during and after the global pandemic. That effort led to a broad set of community-driven proposals, followed by discussion, voting, and recommendation of a number of new practices across our conferences. These efforts led to new innovations such as non-paper sessions, expanded and more diverse program committees, online talk series, new conference initiatives, and experimentation and innovation with reviewing practices. Many of these efforts have seen strong adoption and lasting impact. Our annual community surveys indicate that these changes have improved both the quality and inclusiveness of our conferences. And more change is on the way for 2026 and 2027.

At the same time, important challenges remain. Issues related to diversity, equity, and inclusion persist. Students face repeated paper rejections and difficulty navigating an opaque publication process. The research and publication landscape is also evolving rapidly, with emerging pressures, from the widespread use of AI tools to cultural and structural changes affecting reviewing quality, raising new questions for our community. While these challenges are widely discussed, meaningful progress requires coordinated, concrete action across multiple conference activities and instances. The community has demonstrated strong momentum and a willingness to experiment with new ideas. For these reasons, to further build on the foundation and lessons learned from the 2023 Call for Change, to leverage the incredible creativity and drive within our community to help and support others, and building on ongoing efforts led by the SIGCOMM TSC and other community leadership, SIGCOMM is launching a new Call for Community Proposals.

Scope and Goals

We invite proposals aimed at improving SIGCOMM conferences and making our community broader and more inclusive, across the pre-, during-, and post-conference lifecycle. We are particularly interested in proposals that address:

• Improvements to the reviewing process (e.g., quality, fairness, transparency, scalability).

• Mechanisms to strengthen diversity, equity, and inclusion.

• New conference formats or structures.

• Community-building initiatives.

• Processes or tools that improve the author, reviewer, or attendee experience.

While improving reviewing is a particular concern, this call is broader and requests proposals in all areas that can positively impact the SIGCOMM community.

What’s New This Time

This call differs from the 2023 process in an important way: we are not only soliciting ideas, but also concrete plans for execution. Proposals MUST go beyond identifying problems to outlining actionable solutions. In particular:

• 1. Proposals should include a clear plan for implementing the proposed changes.

  2. Proposals should identify individuals or teams who are prepared to lead and execute the effort (in cooperation with the EC, the TSC and the TPC chairs).

  3. Proposals may request resources (e.g., funding, dedicated time or space at a conference, organizational support).

To support proposals, the SIG will create an “incubator” for community-driven innovation through a multi-year effort to discover, test, and integrate new ideas into the fabric of SIGCOMM events. As part of this vision, The SIGCOMM EC and TSC will launch pilot experimentation during the main SIGCOMM conference, beginning with the 2028 conference. Future experiments could take various forms, and the proposal should be explicit about how it plans to integrate with SIGCOMM. 

Proposal Structure

We solicit proposals in PDF format (less than 4 pages in 12 points Arial or equivalent) describing the proposed change or experiment. Proposals should be organized as follows:

• 1. Area of focus: submission nature, reviewing process, TPC organization, tools, presentation, format, evaluation, conference content

  2. Proposal content 

  3. Title

  4. Individual or team submitting and the proposal

  5. Overview/Executive summary

  6. Objectives and expected results

  7. Description of Work

  8. Budget (if any)

  9. Related works

  10. Reference (if any)

This call is not intended to be a competition. It is ok for proposals to be complementary, and the Executive Committee and the TSC may select and support multiple proposals. All submissions will be publicly available in the shared drive to encourage transparency, feedback, and cross-pollination of ideas. We strongly encourage proposers to review, learn from, and build on each other’s work, and to engage in open discussion (e.g., via a our dedicated Slack Channel #community [join link]) throughout the process.

We don't just want to talk about change! individuals or groups submitting a proposal must sign on to take leadership and implement their proposal.

Selection and Next Steps

• Proposal submission deadline: August 1st, 2026. To be uploaded to the SIGCOMM EXP shared drive.

• Presentation of the proposals (5 minutes per proposal) at the SIGCOMM community session August 19, 2026 (remote presentation possible)

• Note that all proposals will be publicly available on the drive.

• Selection of the proposals by the SIG executive committee and TSC before November 30, 2026.

• Implementation will start as early as January 2027 for impact on SIGCOMM 2028 conference.