Authors submitting papers to CATS 2009 will have the option of submitting their paper to a Discussion Track. This will follow the same submission and assessment process as standard submissions, including publication in the proceedings and presentation at the conference. The only difference is that papers accepted into this track will be made available on the CATS web page, together with some comments from the programme committee, which are intended as "seed comments" for further discussion of the paper in an online forum. Discussion, comments, questions and other feedback is encouraged by anyone who cares to participate, including program committee members, the authors, interested members of the CATS community and anyone else who may be interested so to do. The period of discussion will be open until the time of the CATS conference (January 20-23, 2009).
Hence by the time of the conference itself, there has already been an opportunity for a significant amount of discussion of the paper, which may including its strengths, weaknesses and significance, or simply some familiarity with its contents so that the audience does not come in "cold" at the conference. This means that the presentation at the conference can concentrate more on points of interest, and less on giving background and technical details. This also means a greater emphasis at the conference on discussion and interaction than on listening to prepared lectures, a process which could be assisted by the session chairs giving a summary of the discussion as part of the introduction to each paper
Whilst interest in the discussion track will presumably be centred on CATS attendees, it will be open to anyone interested, meaning a potentially larger audience for the discussion. It also provides an opportunity for consultation with the large number of experts outside the CATS community. For example, someone (perhaps one of the PC chairs) could approach an outside expert and ask their opinion on the discussion of the papers. Alternatively, an author of a paper could ask colleagues (in their own institution or elsewhere) for their reaction to the discussion on their paper.
Participation in the discussion track is entirely voluntary; in particular, authors are free to submit papers to the "normal" track, in which case the papers would be refereed in the standard way.