Onward! Essays 2020 ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on New Ideas, New Paradigms, and Reflections on Programming and Software Renaissance Chicago Downtown Hotel Chicago, USA November 18--20 2020 Part of SPLASH 2020 Systems, Programming Languages and Applications: Software for Humanity https://2020.splashcon.org/track/splash-2020-Onward-essays Onward! is a premier multidisciplinary conference focused on everything to do with programming and software: including processes, methods, languages, communities, applications and education. Compared to other conferences, Onward! is more radical, more visionary, and more open to ideas that are well-argued but not yet proven. It is not looking for research-as-usual papers. To allow room for bigger, bolder and/or less mature ideas, it accepts less exact methods of validation, such as compelling arguments, exploratory implementations, and substantial examples. Onward! Essays is looking for clear and compelling pieces of writing about topics important to the software community (there is also a parallel Papers track with a seperate announcement). An essay can be an exploration of the topic and its impact, or a story about the circumstances of its creation; it can present a personal view of what is, explore a terrain, or lead the reader in an act of discovery; it can be a philosophical digression or a deep analysis. It can describe a personal journey, perhaps the one the author took to reach an understanding of the topic. The subject area—software, programming, and programming languages—should be interpreted broadly and can include the relationship of software to human endeavors, or its philosophical, sociological, psychological, historical, or anthropological underpinnings. Format and Selection: Onward! essays must describe unpublished work that is not currently submitted for publication elsewhere as described by SIGPLAN's Republication Policy. Submitters should also be aware of ACM's Policy and Procedures on Plagiarism. Onward! essays should use the ACM SIGPLAN Conference acmart format. Please refer to the conference's website above for full details. The Onward! Essays track follows a two-phase review process. Essays are peer-reviewed in a single-blind manner. Accepted essays will appear in the Onward! Proceedings in the ACM Digital Library, and must be presented at the conference. Submissions will be judged on the potential impact of the ideas and the quality of the presentation. Important dates: All deadlines are midnight, anywhere on Earth. Essay submission: 23 April First-round notification: 11 June Second-round submission: 15 July Final notification: 30 July Conference: 18--20 November Programme Committee: Didier Verna, EPITA Research lab, France (Program Chair) Anya Helene Bagge, University of Bergen, Norway Alexandre Bergel, University of Chile Jean Bresson, Ableton, Germany Maxime Chevalier-Boisvert, Université de Montréal, Québec Elisa Gonzalez Boix, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium Hidehiko Masuhara, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan Kent Pitman, PTC, USA Donya Quick, Stevens Institute of Technology, USA Gordana Rakić, University of Novi Sad, Serbia -- Resistance is futile. You will be jazzimilated. Jazz site: http://www.didierverna.com Other sites: http://www.didierverna.info