Email on 17/07/2014
Dear AAAI-15 Workshop Organizers,
Congratulations on having your workshop accepted for inclusion in the Twenty-Ninth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-15), to be held at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Austin, Texas, USA, January 25-29, 2015. The workshop program is an important element of the overall conference program, and we appreciate your commitment to making your workshop a carefully planned, successful event.
The workshop program will be held on Sunday and Monday, January 25-26. As in past years, an attempt will be made to coordinate the schedule of the workshops with the tutorial program to avoid conflicts. The schedule of workshops will be available in late September. When designing your workshop, please pay attention to the uniform break times noted below. Most workshops start at 9:00am, and conclude by 5:00pm. Your workshop room assignment will be sent to you in early January.
We would like to review a few things regarding the general process for the workshop program. Attached are the following documents:
1) Chair Letter of Agreement
2) AAAI-15 Workshop Program Deadlines
3) AAAI-15 Workshop Procedures
4) Audio/Visual Request Form
5) Electronic Submission Instructions (to be sent separately in November)
Please note that the most pressing task at the moment is the preparation of your Call for Participation blurb. We would like this back from you no later than July 23, 2014. Full details about the preparation of this blurb are included below.
To acknowledge receipt and acceptance of these deadlines, guidelines, and procedures, please sign and return the attached Chair Letter of Agreement no later than July 23.
Thank you again for your participation in the AAAI-15 Workshop program. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Keri Harvey or me at gro.iaaa|51spohskrow#gro.iaaa|51spohskrow. We look forward to working with you during the coming months.
Warmest regards,
Carol Hamilton
Executive Director
AAAI-15 Workshop Program
CHAIR LETTER OF AGREEMENT
July 16, 2014
Dear Workshop Organizers:
AAAI is pleased to include your workshop (please fill in the full workshop name) as part of its AAAI-15 Workshop Program. AAAI will provide all the services listed in the accompanying "General Information and Instructions," and will make every effort to adhere to the deadlines as outlined in the attached material.
Workshop Chairs also agree to abide by these guidelines and deadlines. In the event that they are unable to meet a particular deadline, they agree to notify AAAI immediately and to arrange for a revised mutually acceptable deadline.
Please note that any workshop emphasizing commercial technology must be neutral among the suppliers of relevant technology, e.g., representatives from the different suppliers should be contacted and should have equal opportunity to submit papers.
AAAI's liability for the workshops is limited to the services noted in this agreement and the attached deadlines and procedures.
I have read all of the material included in this email dated July 16, 2014, and agree to the conditions noted therein.
Date
Workshop Chair Signature
__
Please Print Name
E-Mail Address:
Please return agreement to AAAI by email attachment to gro.iaaa|51spohskrow#gro.iaaa|51spohskrow, by fax to +1-650-321-4457 or by postal mail to 2275 East Bayshore Road, Suite 160, Palo Alto, California 94303, no later than July 23, 2014.
***
AAAI-15 WORKSHOP PROGRAM DEADLINES
July 16, 2014
AAAI sends packet of information to workshop organizers, including contracts, procedures, and preliminary production schedules by e-mail.
July 23
Organizers submit CFP blurb of no more 400 words for their workshops to chairs and AAAI (gro.iaaa|51spohskrow#gro.iaaa|51spohskrow).
Organizers submit signed Chair Letter of Agreement to AAAI by fax at 650-321-4457 or by email to gro.iaaa|51spohskrow#gro.iaaa|51spohskrow.
July - September
Organizers circulate CFP to own communities.
AAAI posts CFP on AAAI website and circulates to membership.
October 14
Workshop submission deadline
November 14
Organizers send acceptance/rejection letters, including allotted page lengths, the deadlines for receipt of camera-ready papers (November 25), and A/V forms, if appropriate, to participants. (Please note that the upper page limit for technical reports is 200 pages. Please advise your accepted authors of their individual page limits to adhere to this requirement.) Organizers should also refer them to the AAAI Distribution License form at the AAAI web site (see point 2. at http://www.aaai.org/Publications/Author/author.php), which each author will be required to sign. Complete publications instructions will be sent directly to authors by AAAI.
November 17
Organizers send alphabetized invitee lists to AAAI at gro.iaaa|51spohskrow#gro.iaaa|51spohskrow. The lists should include all committee members, all accepted authors/presenters, invited speakers, panelists and other invitees. Please include name, affiliation, and email addresses. Organizers can continue to send names of invitees after this deadline, but the bulk of the invitees should be included in this list. Participants will be sent the registration announcement and other reminders.
Organizers send list of accepted papers for their workshops, including title and all known authors to AAAI at gro.iaaa|51spohskrow#gro.iaaa|51spohskrow. Please include the email address for the contact author (and, if possible, all authors). Organizers also notify AAAI if their accepted papers fall into more than one classification, such as full papers and posters.
Note: All papers for each workshop will be collected and made into a AAAI technical report, which will be included in the AAAI Digital Library. Organizers should notify AAAI immediately at gro.iaaa|51spohskrow#gro.iaaa|51spohskrow if there is a compelling reason why the papers for their workshop cannot be made into a technical report. The issuance of technical report allows the work to be cited. AAAI will send complete technical report submission instructions directly to authors and organizers.
November 18
AAAI sends instructions to authors and organizers on how and when to prepare the technical reports/working notes, and how to submit their Permission to Distribute form
AAAI notifies workshop invitees of the location of registration materials on the AAAI web site.
November 25
Invited participants send A/V forms to gro.iaaa|51spohskrow#gro.iaaa|51spohskrow, if applicable.
Invited participants mail a signed original "Distribution License" form to AAAI, 2275 East Bayshore Road, Suite 160, Palo Alto, California 94303, USA. If the original form will not reach the AAAI office by the deadline, they should fax a copy to 650-321-4457 or email to gro.iaaa|51smrofbup#gro.iaaa|51smrofbup.
Invited participants submit final camera-ready abstracts and papers via the AAAI Press submission site. *This is an absolute deadline.*
*Organizers send completed front matter to AAAI, including plain text versions of the following to gro.iaaa|51spohskrow#gro.iaaa|51spohskrow:
1) Title of Workshop
2) Organizers names and affiliations
3) Organizing or program committee names and affiliations
4) Preface, if desired
Organizers of workshops with working notes must submit electronic materials to gro.iaaa|51spohskrow#gro.iaaa|51spohskrow according to the AAAI guidelines.
Separate Publication Instructions will contain complete details.
November 28
AAAI-15 Early registration deadline
December 1
Organizers submit A/V, setup and poster session requests to AAAI.
December 4
AAAI sends Organizers current roster of workshop registrants. Organizers encourage remaining invitees to register.
January 2, 2015
AAAI-15 Late registration deadline
Organizers post workshop schedules on their websites and submit a PDF version of their schedule to gro.iaaa|51spohskrow#gro.iaaa|51spohskrow for distribution at the workshop.
January 9
AAAI sends Organizers roster of pre-registered workshop participants and room assignment.
January 25-26
AAAI-15 Workshop Program, Austin, Texas, USA
February 20
Organizers submit 400-700 word report on workshops to gro.iaaa|51spohskrow#gro.iaaa|51spohskrow.
AAAI-15 WORKSHOP PROCEDURES
Workshop Letter of Agreement
The Letter of Agreement must be filled out and returned to AAAI by July 23, 2014. Please send to AAAI at gro.iaaa|51spohskrow#gro.iaaa|51spohskrow, by fax to +1-650-321-4457, or by postal mail to 2275 East Bayshore Road, Suite 160, Palo Alto, California 94303.
Workshop Name
The name of the workshop should be "The AAAI-15 Workshop on…" held at the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-15).
Workshop Coordination
AAAI will coordinate all logistics for the workshops including coffee breaks, audio visual equipment, and room set-up. Lunches are not included (see below for lunch purchase option). In order for AAAI to complete its orders on time, organizers must adhere to the deadlines as outlined in the AAAI-15 Workshop Program Deadlines.
Number of Participants
The target number of participants in one workshop should be between 20 and 75 people. Exceptions to this must be approved by the Workshop Cochairs, Eric Eaton and Weng-Keen Wong. Participants are normally invited by the organizers, but registration is usually open to other AAAI-15 registrants.
Registration Fee
The 2015 workshop program fee structure includes discounted workshop registration for AAAI-15 technical registrants and a workshop only registration option. A complimentary workshop only registration will be extended to the workshop chair and co-chair (one or two only per workshop). Organizers wishing to register for the main technical conference must pay the normal registration fee for this. Preregistration is preferred. Organizers can designate someone else participating in their workshop, such as an invited speaker, to receive the complimentary registration if they have other funding. Please note that all other attendees/participants, including invited speakers and panelists, must register for the workshop and pay the associated registration fee unless other funding is secured to cover this cost.
Call for Participation
The organizers should submit a short (approximately 400 words) description of their workshop for the Call for Participation. The description should follow this format:
Description of workshop: the main objectives
Topics
Format of workshop: how is the workshop being organized — by
application area or other, panels, invited speakers, interactive,
small groups, discussions, presentations. If the workshop is a
2-day workshop it should be specified here, but 1-day workshops
need not specify length.
Attendance: how many people and what are the criteria to be invited
Submission requirements: how many pages; by electronic mail or hard copy,
list of relevant research work/publications, paper or abstract
Submit to: full address, phone, fax, and email
Workshop Chair: full address, phone, fax, and email
(exclude if same as submission address)
Workshop Committee: names, affiliations, emails
Workshop URL: site where more detailed information
will be made available to participants
Please note that each workshop is allocated limited space in the Call for Participation. Long lists of bulleted items are discouraged because of size limitations. Lists will be truncated or delineated by semi-colons, if necessary.
The organizers should email the descriptions to Eric Eaton and Weng-Keen Wong (moc.liamg|sw51iaaa#moc.liamg|sw51iaaa), and AAAI (gro.iaaa|51spohskrow#gro.iaaa|51spohskrow) by July 23, 2014. The final Call for Participation will be posted on the AAAI-15 conference web site at http://www.aaai.org/Conferences/AAAI/aaai15.php. An announcement of this posting will be mailed to all AAAI members in early August. Individual organizers are also encouraged to distribute their own CFPs on bulletin-boards, social media lists, and through other channels to make sure that they reach potential workshop participants. Please note that no budget is available to reimburse hard-copy distribution.
The following information will be posted by AAAI and is uniform for all the workshops:
Submission deadline: October 14, 2014
Notification date: November 14, 2014
Author accepted paper submission deadline: November 25, 2014
Invitations
The organizers decide who will be invited. Invitees may include committee members, accepted authors, invited speakers, and other interested individuals. Organizers are responsible for inviting all participants and notifying all authors of the decisions regarding their papers. Organizers should send AAAI (gro.iaaa|51spohskrow#gro.iaaa|51spohskrow) the provisional list of invitees by November 17, 2014 (names can be added after this date). The list should include names, affiliations, and email addresses. AAAI will then notify invited participants of the location of the AAAI-15 registration materials, and provide instructions about how to register. Please note that all attendees/participants, whether invited or not, must register for the workshop and pay the associated registration fee. Workshop attendance should be targeted at 20-75 participants. In order to ensure a good attendance, organizers agree to provide a list of at least 30-40 potential participants.
In addition to the list of invited participants, organizers should submit a list of accepted papers, including titles, authors names and emails by November 17, 2014. AAAI will send the accepted authors (and organizers) a complete set of instructions about how to prepare their camera-ready papers and where to submit them, along with their signed AAAI Distribution License (http://www.aaai.org/Publications/Author/distribute-permission.pdf).
Workshop Papers
Technical Reports
AAAI will compile the papers for each workshop into a AAAI technical report — an informal publication that allow materials to be available quickly to a wider audience after the workshop. Although not a formal, archival publication, technical reports provide authors with a mechanism for citing their work (technical reports, for example, will be assigned an ISBN and are freely available in AAAI's digital library), and relieve the organizer of the chore of providing copies of papers. Please note that AAAI will hold compilation copyright to the technical report, and that issuance of a technical report does not satisfy the AAAI Press's right of first refusal (see below).
Technical reports should not exceed 200 pages if at all possible, which typically means a page limit of about 5-8 pages per participant. The organizers must tell the presenters what the page limit is per person at the time of notification, as it depends on the total number of presenters. All technical report submissions and organizer frontmatter are due November 25, 2014. (This is a firm deadline.)
Working Notes
In rare cases, the organizer elects to have the workshop papers made into a set of working notes instead of a technical report; this is only appropriate in cases where the work is extremely preliminary and not ready for wider distribution (posting the papers on any public site, for example, is prohibited). Working notes are intended for use during the workshop and will not be distributed beyond the workshop without permission. If this option is chosen, the organizer should notify AAAI by the date specified in the AAAI-15 Workshop Deadlines. Each presenter must send the organizers a PDF of the camera-ready copy for his or her paper, abstract or other material. The organizer will be responsible for ensuring that all PDFs print and distributing them at the workshop. Papers should not be paginated or otherwise presented in a publication-like format.
The choice of working notes indicates that the papers circulated at the workshop are preliminary, and not of publication quality. As a consequence, this work is not citable, it may not be posted on any public website, and it will only be circulated among workshop attendees. This work will not distributed beyond the workshop. Workshop organizers are reminded that AAAI must be contacted first before pursuit of any post-workshop publication derived from the workshop.
Formatting and Submission Requirements
As noted above, AAAI will issue a set of publication instructions directly to all authors, including directions for formatting and submission of their papers. AAAI workshop authors are required to use the AAAI style files to prepare their papers (http://www.aaai.org/Publications/Templates/AuthorKit.zip). AAAI will also notify authors about the requirement to sign the AAAI Distribution License, available at http://www.aaai.org/Publications/Author/distribute-permission.pdf. AAAI cannot produce the technical report or the workshop notes until this document is received at the AAAI office. AAAI will also notify organizers of their responsibilities regarding the publication of the technical reports, including the submission of various frontmatter information by November 17, 2014.
Please note that all technical reports are distributed at the conference in electronic format only via the AAAI Digital Library. All submissions must follow the guidelines described above.
Post-Workshop Publication / Right of First Refusal / Electronic Distribution
If the organizer's intent is to pursue post-workshop publication (in, for example, a journal or book, or on a website), please note that this is a AAAI event, and as such, AAAI holds compilation copyright to the collected papers. That means that permission must be obtained before making any arrangements for post-workshop publication (electronic or otherwise). In addition, AAAI also holds a right of first refusal for any post-conference publication. That means that no arrangements or plans for hard copy or electronic publication of all or a subset of the papers contained in your technical report or working notes may be made without first exploring the options available through AAAI Press and AI Magazine. You may contact the magazine and press editors at gro.iaaa|51enizagamia#gro.iaaa|51enizagamia and gro.iaaa|51sserp#gro.iaaa|51sserp, respectively.
AAAI technical report status does not preclude individual authors from reusing their work in longer journal papers or books. For post-workshop publication opportunities, either in technical report or proceedings format (the latter requires preparation of a proposal and a review process with the AAAI Press editor-in-chief), via AAAI Press, please contact gro.iaaa|51sserp#gro.iaaa|51sserp.
Posting Workshop Papers on a non-AAAI Website
AAAI will hold the compilation copyright on the set of papers for your workshop, and will make them freely accessible in the AAAI Digital Library. Authors are allowed to post their papers at their own sites, and retain copyright to their papers. However, organizers cannot compile all the papers in one place and post them as a set, nor should they publish a table of contents for the workshop with links to the papers. Instead, they are encouraged to post a pointer to the AAAI Digital Library or the AAAI webpage for the individual AAAI Press technical report.
Schedule
A PDF version of the schedule is due to AAAI from the organizers by January 2, 2015. The schedule is printed and distributed to workshop attendees onsite. If the schedule is not submitted by January 2, it is the organizer's responsibility to duplicate it and hand it out onsite. It will not be possible for AAAI staff to produce copies onsite. The organizers should also post the schedule on his or her workshop website well in advance of the workshop and no later than January 2.
Lunches/Coffee Breaks
Sometimes workshop organizers want to arrange for box lunches in the room. This can be done, but the cost is often rather high in conference facilities. Box lunches or a buffet lunch will cost approximately $30.00/person, and the organizers must collect the money in advance and send payment to AAAI no later than January 5, 2015. AAAI will provide coffee breaks at 10:30 am and 3:30 pm each day.
Audio/Visual Requests
The rooms will be equipped with an LCD projector and a screen. Additional equipment, such as speakers to connect audio to laptops or poster boards can be made available if requested by December 1, 2014. Please note that A/V requests are subject to budget restrictions. Authors are required to provide their own laptop computers, as well as hardware to connect to the LCD projector and software needed to operate programs. Connections to the internet are restricted to availability and budget considerations, and must be requested at least two months prior to the event. All A/V requests are due to AAAI by December 1, 2014. A sample form is attached below. Organizers may elect to arrange for special A/V requirements at their own expense. Workshops are not audio/videotaped by AAAI.
Students
AAAI-15 student volunteers are given complimentary technical registrations (does not include workshops). Priority for volunteer positions is given to active conference participants. Information about AAAI-15 student programs is available by writing to gro.iaaa|51reetnulov#gro.iaaa|51reetnulov, and is also available on the AAAI web site.
Cancellations
In the event that a workshop does not attract enough participants to make it economically feasible, AAAI reserves the right to cancel that workshop up until December 15, 2014. AAAI will not be held liable for any costs incurred in the preparation of a workshop if that workshop is canceled.
Report for AI Magazine
The organizer's final task is to write a report about the workshop for publication in AI Magazine. The report should be approximately 400-700 words in length. The report should put the workshop in historical context, cover highlights, and provide an overview of the topic of the workshop. Please be brief! Lists of papers, topics, or presenters are not appropriate. Full instructions and sample reports are available at http://www.aaai.org/Magazine/reports.php. Reports will be grouped together with other workshop reports as an article in an upcoming issue of AI Magazine. Reports should be submitted to AI Magazine at gro.iaaa|51enizagamia#gro.iaaa|51enizagamia no later than February 20, 2015.
If, in addition to the summary, you plan to submit an article based on your workshop to AI Magazine, please refer to the AI Magazine Author Guidelines, including submission information, at http://www.aaai.org/Magazine/magazine-guidelines.php.
AAAI-15 Workshop Program
Audio Visual Request Form
All rooms in which the workshops are held will have an LCD projector and screen as standard equipment. Individuals requiring special audio visual needs (e.g., speakers to connect audio to laptop, poster boards, flip charts) for their presentations are requested to provide the information below.
NAME:
WORKSHOP:
PAPER TITLE:
DATE AND TIME OF YOUR PRESENTATION:
TELEPHONE:
EMAIL:
SPECIAL A/V NEEDS (please only list what you would like AAAI to provide):
Please note that A/V requests are subject to budget restrictions. Authors are required to provide their own laptop computers, as well as all software needed to operate programs. Connections to the internet are restricted to availability and budget considerations, and must be requested at least two months prior to the event.
Power strips are restricted to availability and budget considerations, and are limited to the use for demonstrations only. Additional power for all participants to charge electronics, such as laptops, cannot be provided. Participants will be encouraged to charge their devices prior to the start of the sessions each day.
Please return this form to AAAI at gro.iaaa|51spohskrow#gro.iaaa|51spohskrow no later than December 1, 2014. There is no need to return this form if you will use the standard equipment (an LCD (data) projector and screen).