Conference Management

Organization

• Naming and Timing

  • A FLAIRS conference is called "FLAIRS-NN", where NN is the number of the conference and NOT the year, i.e., "FLAIRS-21" is right, "FLAIRS 2008" is wrong.

  • FLAIRS is held Monday-Wednesday or Wednesday-Friday in the second or third week of May. It abuts a weekend to allow a bit of vacation before or after. The "second or third week of May" is just after USA universities finish teaching, and seems to work for the internationals too. It's before the schools are out, which means the hotel prices are still low. Avoid Mothers' Day if possible.

• The Team

  • Conference chair

    1. Budget

    2. Coordination with venue - conference rooms, tables, F&B, events

    3. Website

    4. Registration desk

    5. Name tags, bags, etc.

    6. Assign registration waivers, complementary accommodation

  • Outgoing PC co-chair

    1. Advise and assist incoming PC co-chair

    2. With incoming PC-chair, find invited speakers

    3. Keep an experienced eye on things during the conference

    4. Look for next venue

  • Incoming PC co-chair

    1. Calls for papers, posters

    2. Build program committee

    3. Establish EasyChair installation

    4. With outgoing PC-chair, find invited speakers

    5. Coordinate reviewing, decisions

    6. With outgoing PC chair and PC, choose best paper, best student paper

    7. Build and publish proceedings

    8. With STP chair, choose best poster

  • Special Tracks and Posters chair

    1. Calls for STs, with PC co-chairs evaluate the proposal, informing applicants of results

    2. Explain the EasyChair arrangement to the track chairs

    3. Calls for nominations for ST invited speakers (whio get a conference fee waiver), and then decides up to three winners with the program chairs

    4. Collect URLs for the tracks, send to Conference chair

    5. Coordinate with incoming PC co-chair on poster reviewing, decisions 

    6. Coordinate with PC co-chairs on short paper posters

    7. Poster setup at conference

    8. Poster judging (find judges), with incoming PC chair choose best poster

Financial Matters

• Organization

  • A FLAIRS conference is called "FLAIRS-NN", where NN is the number of the conference and NOT the year, i.e., "FLAIRS-21" is right, "FLAIRS 2008" is wrong.

  • FLAIRS is held Monday-Wednesday or Wednesday-Friday in the second or third week of May. It abuts a weekend to allow a bit of vacation before or after. The "second or third week of May" is just after USA universities finish teaching, and seems to work for the internationals too. It's before the schools are out, which means the hotel prices are still low. Avoid Mothers' Day if possible.

• Budget items

  • Each conference should make $1000 at least. Aim to break even at 150 registrants. We are "not for profit", so making more than $5000 is unnecessary, and making more than $10000 begins to feel like "profit". But we are also "not for loss".

  • Budget for 50% attendance on the tutorial day, 80% attendance at breaks and lunch on day 1, 90% on day 2, and 70% (if no afternoon papers) or 80% (with afternoon papers) on day 3.

  • Budget $500 for corporate fees

  • Budget $1200 for EasyChair reviewing

  • Budget $400 plus ($5.00 + (4.9% * registration fees) per attendee) for EasyChair registration

  • Budget $4000 for registration staff

  • Budget $1000 for costs of maintaining and upgrading the FLAIRS AV equipment.

  • Budget $600 for cost of bringing AV gear and poster boards to FLAIRS.

  • Budget $450 for event insurance.

  • Budget $1800 for conference chair travel and accommodation expenses (not a fixed payment - must provide receiptsl)

  • Budget $1800 for treasurer's travel and accommodation expenses (not a fixed payment - must provide receipts)

  • Budget $1000 for next year's chair's site visits (not a fixed payment - must provide receipts)

  • Budget $50 for domain name

  • Budget $5000 for invited speakers' travel (each gets $1500 (USA)/$2000 (outside USA))

  • Budget $1200 for DDD II awardee

  • Budget $350 for awards and shipping

  • Budget $500 for printing and office supplies

  • Budget $750 for organizers' dinner (spouses welcome, but pay for their dinner)

  • Budget $2500 for AV hire at the conference hotel

  • Budget $1700 for some souvenirs, at the discretion of the conference chair within budget

  • Budget for some student helpers (waivers, regos, at the discretion of the conference chair within budget)

  • Budget some contingency money

  • The conference does not pay for:

    1. Food and beverage charges of keynote speakers, or anyone

    2. Room upgrades for keynote speakers, or anyone. We can use freebies for that, if we want.

    3. Miscellaneous fees (like resort fees) for keynote speakers, or anyone

    4. Accommodation for Doug Dankel award winners (except in special cases)

    5. Internet, unless the venue is incredibly insistent - negotiate hard

    6. No organizer (other than the registration chair) gets paid an honorarium, fee, etc. Nobody! Never!

• Hotel rooms, travel

  • Block 

    1. 30 rooms for the night before the workshop/tutorial day

    2. 70 rooms for the night between the workshop/tutorial day and the first conference day

    3. 70 rooms for the two nights during the conference

    4. 40 rooms for the night at the end of the conference

  • Registration chair gets 3 nights accommodation.

  • Each invited speaker gets 3 nights accommodation.

  • The conference chair should try cover their own accommodation and travel within the $1800 (see above), but some more support is acceptable at the discretion of the conference chair within budget. Maximally 3 nights accommodation, except if needed to work at at the conference for longer.

  • The program chairs should try cover their own accommodation and travel, but some more support is acceptable at the discretion of the conference chair within budget. Maximally 3 nights accommodation, except if needed to work at at the conference for longer.

  • The treasurer should try cover their own accommodation and travel within the $1800 (see above), but some more support is acceptable at the discretion of the conference chair within budget. Maximally 3 nights accommodation, except if needed to work at at the conference for longer.

  • Other FLAIRS officers do not get accommodation covered except in unusual circumstances at the discretion of the conference chair within budget. Maximally 3 nights accommodation, except if needed to work at at the conference for longer.

• Registration waivers

  • 3 general conference invited speakers. Each gets rego waiver, 3 nights hotel, 

  • 3 ST invited speaker waivers, by competition between ST chair proposals. They pay their own travel and hotel expenses.

  • General chair, program co-chairs, and STP chair get waivers (4 in total).

  • Registration chair gets a waiver (to cover meals)

  • Treasurer gets a waiver. 

  • Other FLAIRS officers get waivers only in unusual circumstances at the discretion of the conference chair within budget.

  • Possible registration staff waiver (see above)

  • DDD II awardee gets a waiver

  • Other waivers are at the discretion of the general chair, staying within budget.

• Sponsorships

  • A standard sponsorship is $1200

  • In return the sponsor gets

    1. One conference author/general registration (including lunches, breaks, reception, banquet, etc.)

    2. Table for sponsor in the break area

    3. Logo on web page linked to sponsor site

  • More substantial sponsorship arrangements are possible on a case-by-case basis.

• Eric Bell made this excellent spreadsheet for the FLAIRS-36 budget - you can copy it!

Schedule of Things To Do for a Conference

• Have Zoom meetings every two weeks starting about 3 months out.

• Calls for Papers and Special Tracks

  • The call for special track must also ask for any plans to have an invited speaker in the track, and explain that such invited speakers might or might not get a registration waiver (only 3 such waivers are available - see above). ST invited speakers get no other support from the conference.

• Reviewing

  • Reviewing to be double blind, but only to the extent of changing the name and affiliation in the header. The header must be there still to ensure page limits are not breached in camera-ready versions.

  • ST chairs' papers are reviewed by two track PC members (coopted as GC reviewers by the GC chairs) and two GC PC members. If there is conflict further expert opinions must be obtained. 

  • The ST chair paper reviewing procedure must be given up front to ST chairs in the CFST. ST chairs must be reminded of this condition when their track proposal is received, and again when (if) accepted.

• Miscellaneous

  • The conference program must have the names and affiliations of all authors listed separately.

Poster Evaluation Process

General Process 

• Let N be the number of posters. (If FLAIRS introduces "abstract only" posters, they will not be contenders for best poster.)

• Have 4 judges, selected by the program chairs before the conference. The judges should have different areas of expertise - senior researchers with broad knowledge of AI are desirable judges. Their identities must be kept anonymous, known only to the program chairs and the other judges.

• Make an initial division of the posters into 4 groups of N/4 posters, optimally grouped by the judges' areas of expertise. Each group is assigned to a judge. This should be done collaboratively by the judges before the poster session (before the conference would be best).

• Each judge makes makes an initial assessment of the N/4 posters in his/her group, deciding which are potential finalists (see below). This should take maximally 40 minutes.

• The judges meet to select finalist posters. Less finalists will allow for better judging in the finalists round, so as few as possible should be selected, maximally N/4. This should take maximally 20 minutes.

• All the judges visit the finalists to make a detailed assessment. Each judge assesses each finalist as strong, moderate, weak. For judges that like a quantitative scale, these may be mapped as strong = 5, moderate = 3, and weak = 1, which also allows for a five point scale. This should take maximally 40 minutes.

• The judges meet to select a winner. This should take maximally 20 minutes.

• If the judges conclude with a tie, the program chairs decide the final winner.

Judging Criteria 

• Research Content

  • Decription of problem - must be understandable by a non-expert

  • Description of solution - must be understandable by a non-expert

  • Evaluation of solution - data, etc.

  • Contribution and impact clearly expressed

• Poster Preparation

  • Clear layout and sequence

  • Readability within 2-3 minutes (no large sections of text)

  • Appropriate use of images and colours

  • Use of reasonable materials (with deference to colleagues from less affluent places)

• Presentation by Author

  • Proactive greeting and invitation

  • Concise and clear explanation of research and contribution

  • Responses to questions

  • Adequate personal presentation (no need for a suit, just a "pass/fail" check that most presenters will pass anyway)

Excel Spreadsheet for evaluation, and a PDF version for printing.

FloridaOJ "How To" for PC chairs

1. Watch this video of how to put papers through FloridaOJ into a proceedings.

2. FloridaOJ’s site becomes the publication of record for each paper.  This means that:

   1. The metadata must be correct.  This includes:

      • Author order

      • Author names/spelling, etc

      • Author affiliation

   2. Remind folks “As you submit your camera ready version to FloridaOJ, it is imperative that you ensure all metadata is correct.   This includes the full names, affiliations, and order of all authors.”

3. FloridaOJ can support the full process of submitting, reviewing, prepublication editing, and then publication. As FLAIRS uses the system only for submission of camera ready versions and subsequent publications, the overall workflow can be customized to enable the following three steps:

   1. Author submits a file, named FLAIRSSubmission##.pdf where ## correlates to the EasyChair paper number for the accepted submission.

   2. Conference chair reviews the submission to check for format, length, etc. If approved, the conference chair should be able to accept the paper, keying it up for publication.

   3. The staged publication can be viewed and verified, prior to full live publication, which will traditionally take place on the Friday before the conference.

Equipment Inventory

• Data projectors

  • InFocus N24+EP. 2400 lumens. VGA input. VGA->VGA cable. Spare bulb. Replaced bulb 2018.

  • InFocus IN112. 2700 lumens. VGA input. VGA->VGA cable. Spare bulb.

  • 3 x InFocus IN128HDX. 4000 lumens. VGA and HDMI input. VGA->VGA cable. Spare bulb.

  • InFocus IN138HD DLP 1080p 4000 Lumens. HDMI input.

• 1 HDMI 4-port hub and amplifier

• 4 USB WiFi hubs.

• 4 DVI->HDMI adpaters.

• 3 HDMI->VGA adaptors.

• 1 VGA->HDMI adapter.

• 5 HDMI->HDMI cables.

• 1 short HDMI extension (what is it for?)

• 2 USB-C->VGA cables.

• 4 USB-C->HDMI cables.

• 2 35' HDMI->HDMI cables.

• 4 25' USB cables.

• N Security cables for data projectors.

• 1 VGA extension cable.

• 4 sets of powered USB speakers

• 70 poster boards; clips, pins, tape, etc.

• Lots of power strips and extension cords

None Performance Lists

No Showers

These people are known to be "no-show" authors, who get papers accepted, pay their registration fee, but then do not attend (without contacting us to explain - we understand extenuating circumstances). Repeat offenders will not have their papers accepted again.