Organizing Conferences

Purpose

The IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS) actively and regularly participates in technical conferences relating to the computational intelligence field. This document describes the procedures, responsibilities and policies for obtaining CIS support for a conference.

The CIS Vice President for Conferences should be contacted directly concerning any issue not addressed by this procedure.

Responsibilities

A. Conference General Chair

An individual may not serve more than two consecutive times as a general chair of the same CIS sponsored conference. The General Chair must submit an application packet to the CIS Vice President for Conferences. Section IV describes the application packet contents. This packet must be submitted via e-mail.

Application deadlines are shown in the table below. Applications received after these deadlines most likely will not be approved.

Any revisions to a previously approved budget, no matter how minor, must be submitted to the Vice President for Conferences for re-approval. The general chair shall not transmit the original budget or any revisions to that budget directly the IEEE. All budgets and subsequent revisions will only be transmitted to the CIS Vice President for Conferences.

The general chair should contact the CIS Vice President for Finance for instructions on obtaining monetary loans or advances authorized in the approved conference budget.

B. CIS Conferences Committee

The CIS Vice President for Conferences will present the application packet to the CIS Conferences Committee (for sponsored or co-sponsored proposals) or to the CIS Subcommittee on Technical Co-sponsorship (for technical co-sponsorship proposals) for review and evaluation. These committees vote for or against approval. The CIS Vice President for Conferences will inform the conference general chair of the vote outcome for technical co-sponsorship requests. Applications for sole sponsorship or co-sponsorship require ADCOM approval. The CIS Vice President for Conferences will forward the application packet and the CIS Conferences Committee recommendation to ADCOM.

C. CIS Administrative Committee (ADCOM)

ADCOM reviews and evaluates all application packets received from the CIS Conferences Committee and votes for or against approval. In particular, ADCOM must approve the conference budget before the release of any funds. The CIS Vice President for Conferences will inform the conference general chair of the ADCOM vote outcome.

ADCOM approves the choice of general chair, the venue and the dates for all conferences, symposiums and workshops sponsored or co-sponsored by the CIS.

ADCOM will review and approve any budget revisions for previously approved sponsored conference budgets.

D. IEEE Conference Services

IEEE conference services is involved only with sole sponsored and co-sponsored conferences. Numerous services including banking, webpage design and credit card processing are available. Details can be found on the IEEE Meeting & Conference Management Services webpage.

All documentation related to conference closeout is submitted to the conference services office. See Section V for further details.

Application Packet

The exact content of the application packet is given in Table 1 below. The packet should be emailed as an attachment to the CIS Vice President for Conferences. Be sure the email message clearly indicates the category of support desired. Any brochures, advertisements or other pertinent material the general chair believes is important in evaluating an application must be scanned and submitted at the time of application.

Applications do take time to evaluate, which makes it imperative that application packets are received well in advance of the conference start date. (See table in Section III A.)

As stated in Section II, co-sponsorships require a MOU between sponsoring organizations. The CIS Vice President for Conferences will assist you in obtaining this MOU. However, this process may take some time. General chairs must plan well in advance to ensure the submission deadlines are still met.

Conference Closeout

There is no CIS involvement in closing a conference if technical co-sponsorship is the only level of participation.

Sole sponsored or co-sponsored conferences cannot be formally closed until a number of financial statements, forms and other documentation are submitted to the IEEE Conference Services. All documents related to conference closeout are submitted directly to IEEE Conference Services. The CIS does not require copies of these documents.

Conference closeout must be done promptly to prevent penalties. The CIS expects all required conference closeout documentation be submitted to IEEE Conference Services not later than 90 days after the conference. The steps necessary to close out a conference are listed on the IEEE Post Conference Activities webpage.

The conference general chair should contact IEEE Conference Services directly for any questions relating to the conference closeout procedures.

The conference general chair shall provide the CIS Vice President for Conferences with the number of submissions and the acceptance rate of papers from the conference.

Table 1: Contents of application packets requesting CIS participation. "X" indicates required item.

Notes

1. For conferences requesting CIS technical co-sponsorship, the full sponsor is expected to offer registration fees to CIS members at the same amount offered to members of the sponsoring organization. The justification statement should indicate this policy would be honored.
2. Brochures showing the venue layout, room accommodations and other facilities must be scanned and included in the application packet. Be sure to indicate expected conference attendance.
3. Must be submitted on IEEE budget worksheet. Download the Summary, Revenue & Expense Detail Excel form. Expected surplus not less than 20% of expenses.
4. Budget must include $750 to cover advertising expenses in IEEE CI magazine.
5. Identify local attractions conference attendees might find interesting. It is highly recommended that brochures describing attractions be scanned and included with the application packet.
6. Contact the CIS Vice President for Conferences to coordinate obtaining the MOU.

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