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Dear Eduardo, Kari-Hans and others I would like to narrow the discussion to conference structure and i hope it is an interesting topic (for some). I think blind-review is a fairly good mechanism to safeguard DELIBERATE discrimination of different sorts, such as sex, skin color, origin of country, etc. However, blind-review may not be especially effective for NON-DELIBERATE distinction, (which i think is Kari-Hans'point). Sometimes an assessment which appears appropriate to the reviewers (who so diligently apply all their understanding and judgement to do the job right), may not be seen as appropriate to others who happen to have different values, interests and/or styles of thinking and expression, or in short different points of view. This is, I think, the problem expressed by Maria and Kati when they told us the anedotes about the dissatisfaction of some Latin-Amercian and Kenyan colleagues had in some certain design conferences. I have asked for suggestions to address this problem. And now I would like to open it up again: 1 Will an open-review process a better alternative to the blind-review process? The virtual cum real conference 'the basic Paradox' organized by Wolfgang Jonas and his colleagues although was an invited conference, the discussion was open and (also in two languages mostly). It seems that open discussion is better than blind-review in allowing more voices to be heard in public. And hearing more voices is helpful in preventing rigidity of thoughts in individuals and in communities, and thus it is in my mind, an important issue in terms of making 'progress'. 2 In terms of problem of different languages and different habits of articulating ideas of importance, are there any good example within or outside of our design community that is worth thinking about? In the "Communicational Space" conference organized by Jorge Frascara and his colleagues, there was simultaneous interpretation between Spanish and English, although some interpretations were more comprehensible than others. I would like to know if it is a valuable practice to have. Best Regards Rosan Eduardo Corte-Real wrote: > Dear Kari Hans: > > You wrote: > > “Sometimes it may be hard to find peers that can perform a fair > review, simply because the topic is not (yet? ever?) understood well, > or because there is a conflict between strands of thinking that > enters the review process.” > > I totally agree with your comment and it just encourages new ways of > building up good refereeing, for one side. For another side, Conferences > and Publications are not the sole way to pursuit excellence but, naturally, > are part of it. Your story about Tim Berners-Lee just illustrates that, > mostly, good scientific work, if technologically applicable, ends by > emerging and surviving review drawbacks.