SIGCSE 2016

Guidelines: BOFs

Date Due Friday, October 23rd, 2015
Time Due 23:59 in Pago Pago, American Samoa (UTC-11h)
Submission Limits 1 page (including abstract of 250 words)
Duration 45 minutes
Submission Link SIGCSE 2016 OpenConf
Notification to Authors Tuesday, November 17th, 2015
Camera-Ready Copy Sunday, December 13th (was December 9th)
Camera-Ready Instructions @ Sheridan Publishing

What is a BOF?

Birds-of-a-Feather (BOF) Sessions provide an environment for colleagues with similar interests to meet for informal discussion. Proposers of BOF sessions should serve as discussion leaders only. BOFs are not intended to be presentations.

Proposals undergo review but not blind review.

How Should The Proposal Be Formatted?

BOF proposals are to be provided in PDF format. The full proposal contains an abstract and a body that describes your BOF (as detailed below). The abstract needs to appear in two places: in the PDF proposal and in a text box on the submission page.

The full proposal is used for the review process only. If the proposal is accepted, the abstract is the description that appears on the Symposium website and in the Symposium program and proceedings. The format for the proposal is as follows.

BOF Proposal Format and Contents

  • Proposer: Include name, affiliation, email address, and website address. You should expect most correspondence related to the conference to arrive via email. Please check your spam filter if you haven’t received an expected notification because the auto-responses generated by the conference software are sometimes blocked.

  • Title: A title for the BOF.

  • Abstract: A description of the BOF. The same abstract will also need to be submitted via a text box on the submission page. Please be sure that your description is accurate and that both submitted copies (here in the BOF Proposal, and in the submission text box) are exactly the same. Significance and Relevance of the Topic: Please include information about any trends in relation to the topic and possibly describe (or cite) evidence to that effect. Your objective here is to explain why the topic is significant. You should also justify how your BOF will engage participants in group discussion and enhance future connections between attendees. This information can help your proposal to be selected if resources become an issue.

  • Expected Audience: Briefly describe the nature and size of the expected audience. If you expect a particularly large or small audience, please explain why. This information can help in room assignment.

  • Discussion Leader(s): Although correspondence will be with the proposer above, it will be the discussion leader(s) who will be mentioned in Symposium literature. Please list any additional such names (besides the proposer) and affiliations here. Be certain that you have their commitments to attend the Symposium. All discussion leaders must register for the SIGCSE conference and be present for the BOF session.

  • Expertise of Discussion Leader(s): Give a summary of the qualifications of the discussion leader(s) as it relates to the BOF topic being proposed.

  • Special Requirements, if any: Because of the informal and spontaneous nature of these sessions, A/V equipment is typically not provided. That said, please describe any pressing needs you feel you will have. Although we cannot guarantee that your requested equipment will be available, we will make every effort to let you know this well before the conference.

BOF Abstract (limited to 250 words)

The abstract is the description of the BOF that will appear on the conference web pages. The description is limited to and must match verbatim the abstract section of the BOF Proposal. The BOF abstract must be submitted in plain text. The abstract for an accepted proposal may contain a URL with more information. (Abstracts of accepted BOFs can be edited in response to reviews.)

Sample Proposal

How Do I Submit My Proposal?

Write your submission using the format specified above.

Convert your paper into Adobe PDF format. Refer to our Creating Adobe PDF Documents page page for assistance.

Details regarding submission upload will be made available when the submission system goes online.

The opening of submissions will be announced through the SIGCSE mailing list, social media, and the front page of this website.

Follow us on Twitter or Facebook.

By SIGCSE policy, all contributors are required to register, attend and present a BOF. See our full policy for more information.

Questions

If you have questions about anything discussed above, please contact the SIGCSE 2016 Birds-Of-a-Feather (BOFs) Wrangler.