A Modest Proposal

Here's an idea: when conferences and journals send CS research papers out to academics for peer review of content, they should also send them to a couple of people in industry to rate how interesting they are. Their rating and comments would not be used as part of the acceptance decision, but would published with the paper in order to stimulate discussion. We learned a lot by asking practitioners what industry wants from research (see Jorge's discussion or these slides), and I think it would spark some useful dialog between the citizens of computing's two solitudes.