call for conference organization- CL 2000

[Veronica Dahl]

                        Call for Proposals
                   Site and Local Organisation
       First International Conference on Computational Logic, CL'2000
                      

In 2000, a major new annual conference series on Computational Logic (CL) 
will begin. This conference will bring together various communities in 
the general area of CL, and will in particular include the International
Joint Conference on Logic Programming (ICLP). The conference will have a
stream organisation with at least 8 streams covering various subfields of
CL, each with their own program committee. In addition, conferences such
as Inductive Logic Programming (ILP) will be collocating. It is expected
that around 400 delegates will be attending. Due to the constraints of the
participating communities, the conference must be held in Europe in 2000. 

Proposals are invited for a site for the conference in 2000 and for the 
handling of local arrangements. 

N.B. The present document aims at completeness in order to provide as much
guidance as possible. However, we are well aware that at the time of 
a site proposal it may be impossible to accurately address all of its 
points, so proposals that address as many points as possible while not 
all will certainly be considered.
 
Proposals should be sent by email to the conference coordinator for
the ALP:

Veronica Dahl (veronica at cs.sfu.ca)

by Sunday April 4th, 1999. 

Further details about the conference organisation and structure can
be obtained from the Program Chair:

John Lloyd (jwl at csl.anu.edu.au)

The conference will be held under the auspices of the Association of Logic
Programming and the CompulogNet Network of Excellence. The conference
organisation itself is the responsibility of the ALP. The Executive 
Committee of the ALP in consultation with the participating communities
will decide which proposal to accept.

To give some idea of the scope of the conference,
here is a possible conference outline (but note carefully that all the 
details of this have yet to be discussed and decided upon):
   
      1 keynote speaker
      7 invited speakers
      12 advanced tutorials (in 3 parallel sessions)
      At least 8 streams, with separate PC's for each stream
      150 submitted papers for the streams (in up to 4 parallel sessions)
      10-25 papers per stream
      A 2 hour panel to end the conference
      First 4 mornings taken up with invited talks and advanced tutorials
      Afternoons of first 4 days and most of last day taken up with
      submitted papers (with 1/2 hour slots for each paper)
      Industrial exhibition (in parallel) 
                         
The likely streams include:
   
      - Automated deduction systems
      - Constraints
      - Database systems (DOOD'2000: 6th International Conference on
        Rules and Objects in Databases)
      - Knowledge representation and non-monotonic reasoning
      - Logic Programming: Implementations and Applications
      - Logic Programming: Theory and Extensions
      - Program development (LOPSTR'2000: 9th International Workshop on
        Logic-based Program Synthesis and Transformation)
      
In addition, ILP'2000 is collocating as a separate conference.

A proposal should give enough information so that the ALP executive committee
has confidence that you would be able to bring it off, and it would be a
good and profitable meeting. In particular, it should address as many
as possible of the following points:

 o Where will the meeting be held? 

 o Suggested dates: It is anticipated that 5 days will be 
  necessary. Also because of various constraints of the participating 
  communities, it appears that late September 2000 would be the optimal
  time, although we will consider whether alternative proposals can
  be accommodated.  

o Who will lead the general and the local organization? Have they
  organized such events before? If so, which ones? Who will handle
  registrations, local organization, etc. Will you need to pay some
  company to do it, or can you handle it yourself, within your own
  organization? If so, what experience do they/you have and what
  support will they give you? Note that the local organisation is 
  to be done collectively for CL'2000 and the collocated conferences.

o What are the conference facilities at the proposed site (hotel,
  resort, university facility), including low cost accommodation? 
  What is their track record (e.g. how did previous conferences 
  held at that location do?) The site needs to have sufficient 
  facilities to support up to 4 parallel streams
  and have a main lecture theatre big enough to comfortably hold at 
  least 400 people. Describe conference rooms, space for informal meetings,
  opportunities for entertainment, possibilities for
  conference banquet/cruise/social event, space for allied
  workshops or conferences before and after the meeting (e.g. NLULP
  - Natural Language Understanding and LP- , or TAPD- Tabulation in 
  Parsing and Deduction). Do you have any plans for attracting as much 
  female representation as possible (e.g. daycare facilities, activities 
  for accompanying children, etc.)? Do you have ideas for attracting 
  exhibitors?
 
 o What will be the financial model? What kind of outlay is
   expected? Provide an approximate budget for the hire of the 
   site facilities and all related expenses, from which it would 
   be possible to estimate what registration fees would be required.   
   What is the breakeven point (in terms of number of attendees)? 
   Which local organizations/industries will sponsor the event (or
   sub-events, e.g. cruise, invited speakers/tutorialists etc),
   and with what arrangements/conditions (usually sponsors are
   acknowledged in all conference materials, including Proceeds)?
   Does your National Research Council have grants specifically
   designed for supporting conferences? Specifically for invited 
   speakers? Do you have contacts with other organizations that 
   might like to co-sponsor the conference, and if so, with what 
   arrangements? See budget policy below.

 o How accessible and "safe" is the site? How will participants travel
   to and from the site, from Europe and beyond? Can deals be negotiated 
   with an "official" airline carrier for the conference?

 o What kind of Internet connectivity and computational support
   can be provided at the site, for presenters as well as
   participants?

 o Will volunteer student assistance be available in the
   organization?

 o What local research groups in logic progamming/computational logic
   will be supporting the organization activity?

 o Will someone from your organizing group be available to talk
   with available organizers at the previous LP event?

 o Do you have any special reason you'd like to organize it? (e.g. to
   emphasize a particular subarea of LP/CL, or to raise the consciousness
   of LP/CL in your country, or to reward hard-working contributors, or
   whatever? 

A meeting proposal is essentially a kind of sales job to the
executive committee. They have to be convinced that, of the
alternatives available, yours will be the best for the LP/CL community.

If you are asked to organize it, then you will be appointed general
conference chair. You will be asked to prepare a budget for
the meeting. The Conference Budget Auditor can give you examples of previous
budgets to help, if we get to that point. 

Organizing a conference can be a lot of work, but it is a wonderful
service to the community, and it can be very rewarding personally. 

*************************************************************

           International Conference on Computational Logic
         Responsibilities of the Program Chair, General Chair,
	 Publicity Chair, Stream Chairs, and Stream Program Committees

1. The conference consists of a number of streams in appropriate
   subfields of Computational Logic. There will be a Program Chair
   for the conference who has overall responsibility for the format and
   content of the technical program of the conference and for the 
   conference proceedings. In addition, each stream will have a separate 
   Stream Program Committee and Stream Chair. The Program Chair 
   shall be appointed by the Executive Committee of the ALP and 
   representatives of the participating communities (for example, 
   the Stream Chairs of the previous conference streams).
   Each Stream Chair will be appointed by the ALP EC and the 
   representatives of the participating communities, and will be 
   responsible for proposing a corresponding (Stream) Program Committee.
   They and the ALP EC should collectively discuss these proposals 
   (say, on a first come first discussed basis) to avoid
   any duplications and to ensure such factors as appropriate
   geographic and gender distribution of the PC members. 
   
      
2. The Program Chair
     (a) in consultation with the participating communities and EC of 
         the ALP, decides the format of the conference.
     (b) is responsible for providing general advertisements 
         concerning the technical content of the conference (which are 
         then distributed in a coordinated way by the Publicity Chair).
     (c) liases with the Stream Chairs concerning the technical
         content of the conference during all stages from the initial 
         calls for papers to the final selection of papers.
     (d) sets the timing of all activities concerned with the technical
         program, including the meetings of the stream PC's.
     (e) after discussions with the Stream Chairs, issues invitations 
         to keynote, invited, tutorial, and panel speakers. 
     (f) negotiates with each Stream Chair a target number of 
         papers before each stream Call for Papers is issued. After 
         each Stream Program Committee has met, the Program Chair 
         settles collectively the number which will be accepted for 
         each stream. Normally, this should be a formality. However, 
         in case of a disagreement, the Program Chair can set the upper 
         limit for this number taking into account such factors as the 
         the average numbers of papers accepted by other streams, and 
         the length and format of the conference.
     (g) edits the conference proceedings and liases as needed with 
         the publisher of the conference proceedings. 
     (h) in the particular case of CL'2000, the Program Chair agrees 
         with the Stream Chairs on a choice of the publisher 
         for the conference proceedings. This publisher is intended 
         to remain unchanged for a number of years. Subsequently, 
         the Program Chair contacts the publisher and signs the contract
         on behalf of the ALP and the participating communities. 
         The royalties, if any, will be transferred to the account of
         ALP and, if desired, distributed in an equitable way between 
         the ALP and the participating communities.
     (i) liases as needed with the Program Chairs of any collocating 
         conferences on matters such as the harmonisation of the format 
         and content of the two technical programs, the choice of any joint
         keynote, invited, tutorial, or panel speakers, and joint
         publicity. 
    (j) appoints a Publicity Chair whose task is to collect good lists 
	of emails from the Stream Chairs, and to oversee an advertising 
	of various stages of the conference per email.
          
3. The Stream Program Committees have complete autonomy within the 
   limits of the subfield they cover, except for the matter of the 
   final number of papers they can accept, as explained above.
   Each Stream Program Committee is responsible for providing the Call 
   for Papers for that stream and all publicity pertinent to the stream 
   itself (which is then distributed in a coordinated way by the Publicity
   Chair). Each Stream Program Committee shall hold a Program Committee 
   meeting to select papers in that subfield which will be accepted for 
   the conference. If possible, the Stream Program Committee meetings 
   should take place physically rather than purely electronically.

4. The General Chair must prepare and manage the conference budget, local
arrangements, exhibits, decision on and invitation of the banquet
speaker, additional sponsorships. It has been customary for there to
be informal workshops either before or after the meeting. If there
are to be such, the General Chair is responsible for appointing a
workshop coordinator (or doing it him/herself) to organize the
workshops. The conference budget normally includes the cost of the
meeting rooms for the workshops (but usually this is gratis, or
minimal, from the Hotel, or is arranged at a local university, where
it is free.) Tutorials have also been associated with meetings. If
the tutorials are to be out of the mainstream of the meeting (usually
the day before the meeting begins), then the General Chair is
responsible for their organization. If the tutorials are inline with
the paper presentations, then that responsibility falls to the
Program Chair. The General Chair and the Program Chair will
jointly decide which form of tutorials to hold. In either case, the
cost, if any, of the tutorials must be included in the conference
budget. (Pre-conference tutorials must be budgeted to at least cover
their own expenses.) The General Chair is responsible for
accounting for all the monies (i.e., performs as conference
treasurer, unless another is appointed.)  This requires that
appropriate procedures be followed (which will be available from the
ALP treasurer) so that all monetary transactions can be audited.
Unless s/he explicitly declines, the General Chair should be
member of the Program Committee for all duties (with possible
exclusion of paper reviews, due to lack of time.) The General Chair is responsible for preparing advertising material for the conference 
(excepting material directly related to the technical program, which is 
the responsibility of the Program Chair), which is 
then distributed by the Publicity Chair.  It should be noted in the call-for-participation that by paying the full non-member rate to attend 
the conference, the attendee gets one year free membership in the ALP. After 
the conference is over, a full list of the participants should be sent to the
ALP secretary for integration into the mailing list.
    
         
==================== BUDGET POLICY =======================

1. The budget auditor for all conferences provides guidance on budget
preparation, and s/he MUST approve the budget before any conference
expenses are incurred. After the budget is approved the ALP can
provide funds in advance of the meeting to underwrite expenses
incurred up to 10,000$, unless very special needs arise. In addition
the budget auditor must review all hotel contracts before they are
signed.

Currently Francesca Toni, the Treasurer, is the Budget Auditor.

2. The ALP is the sponsoring organization for these meetings. As
such the ALP gets the profit or incurs the loss. Other organizations
can be ``co-sponsors'' and have their name on conference advertising,
but they will not share in the profits or losses (unless there are
exceptional circumstances and the ALP Executive Committee agrees
otherwise.)

3. The conference budget should be designed to break-even at quite a
pessimistic estimate of attendance. The idea is that a conference
should be profitable. The conferences are the major source of income
for the ALP and these monies are needed make advances for future
conferences, support student participation in ALP activities, to
support ongoing administrative efforts, etc.

4. Conference budget should include the cost for proceedings. The
conference organisers should contact the publishing house directly,
decide the number of copies, liase the price and handle payment.  The
conference organisers should also decide how much they should charge for
extra copies sold at conference.  It should be less than the bookshop
selling price, by at least 10%, possibly even the cost price, if the
conference is doing well and it does not need any extra money to make
the required profit.

The shipping charges are paid by the conference organizers
directly. The conference organisers must make sure that prior to the
conference they have a WRITTEN agreement with the publishers on the cost
of the proceedings and transportation (useful for budgeting, too),
and that all publication bills conform to this agreement before they are
paid. Any extra free copies that the ALP gets from the publishers will be
provided free (up to availability) for PC members who cannot attend
the conference (if they attend, their registration covers their
copy). Extra proceedings that come to the ALP are NOT to be sold at the
conference. Such monies cannot be included as projected income in
the budget.

5. The budget policy regarding invited speakers, tutorialists and
Program Committee meeting is as stated in the list of responsibilities
of Conference General Chair.

The General Chair will make a special effort to locate those funding
sources specifically destined to Invited Speakers (e.g. in Canada, this
is the only item that conference funds from NSERC can be used for) and
apply for them on time (typically if not successful in the first
application, there is still time to apply the next time around if one
starts early enough). As well, when preparing a budget for a sponsoring
company, it is recommended to include Invited Speakers' costs in the
budget.

6. Free registration: Conference Chair, PC chair and Invited speakers
get free registration, but all others pay (including ALP president.)

7. The ALP carries insurance in the U.S. for liability for
conferences for suits brought in the U.S. Conference budgets do NOT
need to contain such an item.

8. After the conference, once all the accounting has been completed,
the conference chair must provide the ALP treasurer with a detailed
breakdown of the final accounts, prepared in accordance with ALP
guidelines. These guidelines are determined in consultation with the
ALP's accountant for auditing purposes, and will be provided to the
conference general chair. Moreover, the conference chair must
make sure that all invoices, cheques and other records of income and
expenditure are kept and can be produced if required by the ALP or
its accountant.