We invite proposals for workshops to be held August 21-23, 2021 in Montreal, Canada, immediately prior to the main conference. The aim of the workshop program is to provide a structured setting for the discussion of specialized technical topics, and the format of proposed workshops should be designed to promote an active exchange of ideas between attendees.
All members of the AI community are invited to submit workshop proposals for review. We encourage several forms of workshops:
Classical workshops that focus on a particular research area, including proposals for continuations of workshops that were held at previous general AI conferences (e.g., IJCAI, AAAI, ECAI) or discipline specific conferences (e.g., NeurIPS, KR, AAMAS, UAI, ICAPS…).
Workshops that focus on emerging topics and applications, or on open research questions and challenges.
Cross-discipline workshops that foster exchange of ideas between groups that are unaware of each other’s research.
Miscellaneous topics of interest to the AI community.
Workshops can vary in length from half a day to two days. To cover costs, it is necessary to charge workshop participants a workshop fee, which is separate from the main conference fee. Workshop attendees do not need to register for the main IJCAI conference, but are encouraged to do so. IJCAI reserves the right to cancel workshops whose attendance does not support their running costs.
Important Dates
February 5, 2021: Proposal submission deadline
March 15, 2021: Acceptance notification
August 21-23, 2021: IJCAI-21 workshops
Requirements for Proposal Submission
Workshop proposals should be submitted electronically as a single PDF file via the web page
Each proposal should contain the following information:
- Call for contributions, containing a brief introduction and list of relevant topic areas.
- A preliminary workshop format and a proposed schedule for organizing the workshop, including desired length for the workshop (0.5-day, 1-day, 1.5-day or 2-day). Please indicate if you intend to have any activities other than contributed talks (e.g., invited talks, panels, or posters).
- Estimate of the audience size.
- A tentative list of PC members (including full names and affiliations).
- A list of related workshops held within the last few years, if any, and their relationship to the proposed workshop. If this workshop continues a workshop from a previous general or area-specific conference, please indicate that. If available, please provide the number of submitted/accepted papers and approximate attendance numbers for these workshops.
- Willingness of online workshop organization (should IJCAI 2021 be held online because of the COVID-19 situation, would you be willing to hold your workshop online).
- The names, email addresses, and URLs of the organizing committee members. The committee should consist of two to four people knowledgeable in the area who do not all work at the same institution. Strong proposals include organizers who bring differing perspectives to the workshop topic and who are actively connected to the communities of potential participants.
- The primary contact for the organizing committee.
- Brief CVs of organizing committee members, including a list of key publications demonstrating scholarship in the field and a list of workshops previously arranged, if any.
Selection Process
The selection of workshops will be made by the Workshop Program Committee and will be based on multiple factors, including the scientific/technical interest of the topics in relation to the anticipated IJCAI audience, the quality of the proposal, the balance and distinctness of topics across all workshops, the history of past attendance for non-first-time workshops, and the experience of the organizing committee. We may request proposers addressing similar or overlapping content areas to merge their proposals.
Responsibilities
For all accepted proposals, IJCAI will be responsible for providing publicity for the workshop series as a whole, logistic support, and a meeting place for the workshop.
Workshop organizers will be responsible for:
- Setting up a web site for the workshop and providing its URL to the workshop chairs.
- Advertising the particular workshop and issuing a call for participation/contributions.
- Making the PDF of the workshop notes available to the Local Chair of IJCAI 2021 together with a list of audio-visual requirements and any special room requirements.
- Ensuring that the workshop organizers and the participants register for the workshop and are invited to register to the main conference.
- Coordinating and moderating workshop participation and content.
- Publishing a preliminary workshop program in the workshop’ s webpage before the registration process starts.
- Devising a schedule that meshes with shared breaks.
- To increase the exposure for the workshops, we are considering the possibility of having the workshop chairs present short summaries of the workshops during the main conference.
For each running workshop there will be two free workshop registrations. The organizers will decide themselves whom to give them to. Please send all enquiries about the Workshops to the IJCAI 2021 Workshop Chairs, Carsten Lutz and Min-Ling Zhang, at the email workshopchair@ijcai-21.org.