Workshop on Exposition, Exploration, and Depth 2026

Research conferences rightly give priority to new results, but the ideas behind those results often travel much more slowly than the papers themselves. A researcher may have seen many applications of treewidth without knowing what its decompositions make possible, or may know the statement of a complexity result without understanding the choice of model or reduction that makes it work. The original papers can be difficult entry points; they must establish precise claims for specialists and may leave motivating examples, false starts, and useful mental pictures implicit.

Some of this missing context is passed on in courses, seminars, or conversations. It takes considerable work to turn it into an explanation that can reach people outside the speaker's area, and that work is rarely the subject of a research meeting. Bill Thurston argued that the product of mathematics includes clarity and understanding, and depends on a community that passes ideas from one person to another. More recently, Grant Sanderson advocated for giving greater recognition to accounts showing how one might arrive at a result.

These observations are relevant to Theoretical Computer Science, with its growing range of specialized methods and closely related questions appearing in different subfields. Developments in artificial intelligence also make it timely to ask what it means to understand a technical answer and how such understanding is shared. This workshop seeks to find ways to address these concerns.

We are organizing a video competition for postdocs and students as a part of the workshop. The idea is to recognize and celebrate good expositions in video form and to encourage the community to consider video expositions as a way of spreading understanding.

The expository video can draw from any topic or concept in Theoretical Computer Science, and should not be more than 20 minutes (there is no lower bound, though, and shorter videos conveying an idea clearly are more than welcome). We encourage making videos for a wider TCS audience on topics which are not very well-known outside an area.

The following rules must be followed for an entry to be considered for the competition.

• All the creators of the video must be an undergraduate, postgraduate, or PhD student, or a postdoctoral researcher, at the time of submission.
• The video must not be created through AI video generators. The narration should be by one of the creators, reflecting their understanding about the topic of the video. We follow a similar judging criteria and the same AI policy as 3Blue1Brown’s Summer of Math Exposition.

The videos will be judged on the following.

• Motivation: It should be clear early on in the explainer why the topic matters and why someone should be excited to learn about it.
• Clarity: Jargon should be clearly explained, and the goals of the talk should be easy to understand for a general audience, some of whom might be new to the topic
• Novelty: The idea need not be brand new, but the presentation should either bring a new perspective to a familiar topic, or shed light on an overlooked or obscure idea that deserves more attention.
• Memorability: Something should make the piece stick with the audience, even months later, whether that's the beauty of the presentation, the enthusiasm of the presenter, or a mind-blowing aha! moment.

The deadline is 5th November, 2026, AoE. We look forward to receiving your submission!