Q4: IEEE Conferences

From Health of Conferences Committee

Question 4: WORKSHOPS, ETC.

Does your community provide venue for work not mature enough for your major conferences, such as:

• workshop co-located at conferences
• stand-alone workshops
• panels
• crazy idea sessions

On balance, are these other venues effect for advancing your field? What mechanisms, if any, do you use allow good papers from these venues to later achieve wider dissemination?

ACM/IEEE

We have 8-10 workshops associated with the conference. One has grown quite large (the Grid Workshop) and we are "graduating" it over the next few years. Not all of these are immature work. Indeed the Grid Workshop has an acceptance below the conference. We have about 2-4 standalone workshops - some with separate registration. Yes we use panels and they are sometimes our more popular sessions. Typically we have about 6 sessions. We tried two "gather and scatter" sessions this year - which were a success. These sessions allow people to sign up on site for 15 mini-sessions to discuss late breaking/evolving work. We do other things. We have poster sessions. A small number of rejected papers are referred to the poser sessions, but the general rule is the posters are separate submissions. We have an Exhibitor Forum - where vendors can come and talk about the technical aspects of their products. They are supposed to be non-marketing and are reviewed before selection.

- B.K.