brycewang-stanford SenSys Workflow
A SenSys campaign is governed by two facts the calendar imposes: SenSys runs two submission deadlines per cycle, and its evidence is physical, so the schedule is dominated by wall-clock time you cannot compress — a 47-day deployment takes 47 days. This skill turns the cycle into a backward schedule that leaves room for the measurements and, if needed, the resubmission.
Anchor the calendar first
Before scheduling anything, pin down against the live CFP and HotCRP /deadlines page:
- Which deadline you are targeting (first or second) and which edition it feeds. As of 2026-07-09 the open gate is SenSys 2027 (New York, May 10-13, 2027), with a first-round deadline of June 6, AoE; the second-round deadline is 待核实.
- The AoE cutoff, converted per coauthor.
- Whether an abstract-registration step precedes the paper upload this edition.
Treat the numbers here as a 2026-27 snapshot; the live page controls.
Backward schedule from the deadline
Deployment and energy campaigns, not writing, are the long pole. Schedule from T-0 (paper cutoff) backward:
| Phase | Window | What must be true by the end |
|---|---|---|
| Fit + framing | T-16 wk | sensys-topic-selection cleared; the system's claim is decided |
| Build + instrument | T-14 to T-8 wk | Hardware built, energy instrument set up, testbed reserved |
| Deployment / energy campaign | T-10 to T-4 wk | Long-term runs finished; traces captured (cannot compress) |
| Analysis + writing | T-6 to T-2 wk | Figures from real traces; body drafted against the worked example |
| Reproducibility freeze | T-3 wk | Provenance captured while the testbed is still live |
| Submission audit | T-1 wk to T-0 | sensys-submission end to end on the exact upload candidate |
The overlap is deliberate: writing starts while later deployment runs finish, because you cannot begin the 6-week deployment at T-4.
Budget for the two-deadline reality
The two-deadline model changes planning in a way a single-deadline venue does not:
If targeting the FIRST deadline:
- A reject can resubmit at the SECOND deadline — but only WITH a substantive revision.
- Reserve testbed time AFTER the first notification for the new measurements a revision needs.
If targeting the SECOND deadline as a resubmission of a first-deadline reject:
- The revision + Response to Reviewers is REQUIRED, not optional (sensys-author-response).
- Back-schedule the new deployment/energy runs against the second cutoff BEFORE you commit.
A blocking reviewer objection that needs a fresh energy-harvesting deployment cannot be answered
in two weeks — decide at notification whether the resubmission is feasible on the calendar, not
after you have already missed the window to start the runs (sensys-review-process).
Sequence the whole cycle
1. Fit → sensys-topic-selection (is it SenSys after the merger?)
2. Build → hardware + instrumentation; reserve the testbed
3. Measure → sensys-experiments + sensys-reproducibility (traces captured live)
4. Write → sensys-writing-style + sensys-supplementary + sensys-related-work
5. Submit → sensys-submission (audit the exact PDF; HotCRP fields verbatim)
6. Notification → sensys-review-process (classify), then:
accept → sensys-artifact-evaluation + sensys-camera-ready
resubmit → sensys-author-response, back-scheduled to the next deadline
Standing risks to track
- Testbed contention — shared hardware is the schedule's single point of failure; reserve early.
- Deployment failures — a node dying mid-run is normal; build slack for a re-run.
- Provenance loss — capture energy method and ground truth before teardown, not after.
- Edition drift — re-confirm which edition your deadline feeds each cycle; it can shift.
Output format
[Target] which deadline + which edition it feeds + AoE cutoff in local time
[Longpole] the deployment/energy campaign duration and its start-by date
[Schedule] backward plan T-0 → T-16wk with the freeze and audit points
[Resub] if a reject, is a next-deadline resubmission feasible on the calendar? Y/N
[Open] the scheduling risk most likely to break the plan