This is in response to Meena Mahajan's article in the IARCS Newsletter, Sep. 1996, page 14. My views:
Tutorials Tutorials should get more overall time in NSTCS, either in the form of longer tutorials or in terms of more of them.
Contributed Papers Scrap them. Instead have sign-up slots for people to present, and invite discussion on, their work. Here is how it might work. To sign up for a slot, one would send the organizers a short abstract (say, 3-4 pages) outlining what would be presented. The abstract would be scanned quickly (no refereeing) for relevance to the purposes of NSTCS and assigned a time slot by the organizing committee. During the presentation, the authors might choose to distribute written material relevant to the topic. There would be no formal proceedings. The written abstract could also be used by the authors or the organizers to justify travel support.
Drawing Crowds Good tutorials and invited talks are a good draw for everyone. Even "established researchers" stand to learn much from a good tutorial in an area somewhat different from their area of expertise.