Open Source Documents: Why?

The likely question that most people would have upon looking at this information is why? Why are you posting what could be considered "secret ingredients" to grants or papers or whatever? Why show the man behind the curtain?

Well, the answer to that is a bit complicated but it in part comes from my sincere desire to help the community in general. Now that tenure should soon be done (positive I hope), I can afford to be a bit more brash in trying to shed light on what exactly goes on. I am fairly certain I don't have a huge bag of tricks but I am positive that folks can definitely pick up a few things from my successes and most certainly avoid some of the pitfalls that I ran into. That and a likely positive tenure outcome being a wonderful thing.

Moreover, several reasons in particular stand out for making this content open:

• When I first started out writing grants, I really did not have that much of a clue besides write something cool and go from there. I am hoping a few examples of my thought process and general grant structure can greatly bootstrap people writing grants or papers as newly minted assistant professors or graduate students. Heck, I think I've probably settled into a few bad habits now as time as gone on so perhaps I can pick up a few tricks.
• Rightly or wrongly, the grant / paper process is not terribly transparent. Yes, you get lots of details after you submit but you typically only see the successful final product, not the roughly polished piece of something that was originally submitted. In my mind, transparency in the peer review process is pretty much essential. Sure, you could probably glean wonderful tech transfer from my top secret documents but my thinking is that if there was something to be gained from it, it probably would have already found its way into tech transfer in the first place.
• We are super harsh in the CS field about reviewing and make perfect often the enemy of the good. While I could go on and on and on about this, I am hoping that folks get a good idea of good / bad reviews and how to fix them. I am planning on resurrecting my hall of fame reviews just for that purpose to perhaps shame a few conferences into better policing their reviewers. Will it work, eh, probably not but my goal is to let you see the good, the bad, and the ugly in all of its entirety to get a good picture of the process.