The VL/HCC community has begun a tradition in 2008. Each year, a voting group consisting of all members of the current steering committee, current program committee, and program chairs of the VL/HCC conferences of the years being considered, review the papers from the VL/HCCs held one decade ago (and, until 2017, two decades ago), to select the papers from these decades that have had the most influence on VL/HCC research or commerce.
The voting group considers technical papers presented at VL/HCC approximately one decade ago and approximately two decades ago. All community members are invited to nominate papers from these years and, once a shortlist of nominated papers is produced, the voting group members who do not have conflicts with the nominees review and vote for the most influential paper from each decade.
Following this process, the voting group voted to award the Most Influential Paper Awards to the following papers: