Conference Management
Future Site Proposals
The following are sugggested future sites for FLAIRS. Your opinions, suggestions, and feedback will help us take FLAIRS to locations that best suit your interests. Please email your input to board@flairs.com.
Northwest
Pensacola Beach [2002,2014] (Ken Ford and IHMC HQ there, Hilton Hotel)
Panama Beach (Has an airport)
Southwest
St Petersburg [2013]
Sanibel Island [1998,2009]
Marco Island [2012, 2017]
Northeast
Jacksonville (Fernandina Beach, Amelia Island, Sawgrass Ponte Vedra)
St Augustine [2003] (Shuttle from Jacksonville airport)
Daytona Beach [2010]
Melbourne [2006] (Crown Plaza has asked)
Disney Vero Beach (A bit hard to get there)
Southeast
Ft Lauderdale (Hollywood 2015)
Miami Beach [2004,2008,2021]
Key West [2001, 2007]
Interior
Lake Okeechobee
Orlando [2000] (Disney World)
On a cruise boat
General and 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 $500 for EasyChair
Budget $4000 for Cvent setup fee
Budget $3500 for Stripe fees
Budget $4000 for registration staff
Budget $1000 for costs of maintaining and upgrading the FLAIRS AV equipment.
Budget $500 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 charge
Budget $5000 for invited speakers (each gets $1500 (USA) or $2000 (outside USA))
Budget $1200 for DDD II awardee
Budget $350 for awards and shipping
Budget $500 for printing ond 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
No organizer (other than the registration chair) gets paid an honorarium, fee, etc. Nobody! Never!
Hotel rooms, travel
Block
30 rooms for the night before the workshop/tutorial day
70 rooms for the night between the workshop/tutorial day and the first conference day
70 rooms for the two nights during the conference
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.
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.
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.
Other FLAIRS officers do not get accomodation covered except in unusual circumstances at the discretion of the conference chair within budget.
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 and program co-chairs get waivers (3 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 waiver
Other waivers, e.g., ST coordinator, at the discretion of the general chair, staying within budget.
Sponsorships
A standard sponsorship is $1200
In return the sponsor gets
One conference author/general registration (including lunches, breaks, reception, banquet, etc.)
Table for sponsor in the break area
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
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
Watch this video of how to put papers through FloridaOJ into a proceedings.
FloridaOJ’s site becomes the publication of record for each paper. This means that:
The metadata must be correct. This includes:
Author order
Author names/spelling, etc
Author affiliation
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.”
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:
Author submits a file, named FLAIRSSubmission##.pdf where ## correlates to the EasyChair paper number for the accepted submission.
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.
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 LP540. 1700 lumens. DVI input. VGA->DVI cable. Spare bulb.
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.
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.
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
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.