Once the OopslaProgramCommitteeMeeting has made its decisions, responsibility
for those decisions is anonymous (although the program
chair gets all the hassles). In the committee meeting,
though, it is important to have personal responsibility.
Otherwise, you will get half hour debates that will end
with all the participants saying, "Well, I don't think
the paper should be accepted either, I just thought we
should talk about it." Near as I can tell, if nobody thinks
the paper should be accepted, it shouldn't be accepted,
and no amount of discussion will change that.

Therefore, for each paper to be discussed, open by asking
someone to champion the paper, explaining in a minute or
less why it should be accepted. If no one speaks up, the 
paper gets put in the reject pile (from which it can be
revisited during PaperResurrection. )

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Related Patterns

IdentifyTheChampion is a PatternLanguage that discusses how
to set up other phases of the review process so that PaperChampion
is more likely to work well.