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Manu,

Speaking in general about PCs (of which you will serve on many):

You should definitely avoid pro-forma conflicts: very recent or current co-authors, close personal friends, family, or people from the same institution.

Beyond that, things get fuzzy. When you see a paper, do the authors' names or affiliations immediately bias you strongly one way or another? For instance, "Wow, a paper by Daniel -- gotta be good stuff!", or "A paper from Brown? Probably some silly post-modern hippie-liberal deconstructive view of logic". In either case, you are entering into the judgment with a prejudice (even if it's positive). When the prejudice is strong enough to make you immune to the arguments (or lack thereof) in the paper, then you're in conflict.

One might argue that the same is true of the subject matter as well ("Pointer analyses performed by mapping to transitive closure in Alloy! Rock and roll!"), but to eliminate that would be to eliminate expertise, and then the PC is worse than useless. So we expect that.

Most of all, don't be too scared that you might not do the right thing. Remember: You were invited to serve on the PC. You were chosen out of a large pool of available talent. That means people trust your judgment and your ability to discern. Just exercise that judgment and you'll be just fine.

Shriram

-- PauloBorba - 14 Sep 2006