I spoke with my friend Shashidhara Ganjugunte this weekend. He is turning into a core theory researcher. Shashi pointed me to some of the top conferences in CS theory. Here they are, loosely ranked by reputation.

1. FOCS
2. STOC
3. SODA
4. ESA

I could of course spend my entire career, reading through work from this community. But to begin with, I am more interested in aggregated insights on:

• Which are the top sub-areas?
• How sub-areas are trending, including points of inflection if any.
• Who are the prominent researchers?
• What should be deep-dived into, given that I am researcher in Machine Learning, IR?

Suggestions welcome.