ECOOP / Guidelines for Workshop Proposals

Workshops provide a forum for researchers and practitioners to meet and discuss focused issues in an atmosphere that fosters interaction, exchange, and problem solving.

Workshops also provide the opportunity for representatives of a technical community to coordinate efforts and establish collective plans of action.

All topics related to object-oriented technology are potential candidates for workshops.

More specifically, workshops typically fall into the following categories :

A workshop may address a specific sub-area of object-oriented technology in depth.
Examples of such subareas include object-oriented analysis and design methods, object-oriented operating systems, distributed object programming or theoretical aspects of object-orientation.
A workshop may cover areas that cross the borders of several subareas in computer science, software engineering and related fields.
Examples of such areas include testing of object-oriented software, management of object-oriented software projects, teaching object-oriented programming, requirements engineering, or aspect-orientation.
A workshop may focus on the applications and deployment of object-oriented technology
in areas such as telecommunications, e-commerce, mobile computing or real-time systems. Workshops reporting on industrial experiences are particularly welcome.

Workshop topics are by no means limited to the examples mentioned above.
However, in each case the proposed area is supposed to have enough impetus to yield new results which can be considered important and worth more detailed investigation.

What should a proposal look like?

Workshop proposals should be electronically sent in Postscript or PDF format. Please, use the "title of the workshop" as subject area, and identify the file with the proposal with the name of the contact person.
A workshop proposal should include the following information:

Name of the workshop.
Names and affiliations of the organizers, identifying one primary contact.
Abstract of the workshop with no more than 200 words, including its major topics and goals.
Motivation: relevance of the workshop to ECOOP community; references to other workshops organized by those proponents at ECOOP or related conferences, including the number of participants.
The desired, minimum and maximum number of workshop participants. Explain why this workshop should attract sufficient participants.
Requested Audio/Video equipment, room capacity and organization, and materials.
A preliminary version of the Call for Papers that the organizers must prepare if the workshop is accepted. This should address:
- a brief overview of the proposed workshop including a description of the goals of the workshop and the work practices. May repeat some of the statements made on the abstract, but should be targeted specifically to potential workshop participants, providing some information about who should participate in the workshop.
- maximum number of participants; participant solicitation and selection process.
- workshop activities: this includes a schedule of activities the organizers plan for the workshop. Besides the expected format of the workshop, it may include pre and post workshop activities.
- important dates: deadline submission and acceptance/rejection notification dates.
- references to previous workshops on the same/similar topic, including web sites, where participants may find additional information.
- organizers biography.

Proposal review and acceptance

The proposals will be reviewed by the ECOOP 2003 Workshop Co-Chairs, together with experts in the subject areas of the submitted proposals. Acceptance will be primarily based on an evaluation of the workshop's potential for generating useful results, relevance and expected level of interest in the topic, and the organizers' ability to lead a successful workshop.
Organizers of accepted workshops will be requested to prepare a web page that will contain the latest information about the workshop. The URL of each workshop will be added to the ECOOP 2003 workshop web site.

Workshop Reader

An ECOOP Workshop Reader (WR) has been published in the previous six editions of the conference. The Workshop Readers collect reports from the various workshops, providing an excellent snapshot of the trends in the community. Springer-Verlag will be contacted for publishing the 8th ECOOP Workshop Reader.
Each chapter of the workshop reader is dedicated to one workshop. Therefore, the organizers, together with the attendants of a workshop, should be prepared to produce a report providing the current research being carried out in the workshop topics, the major issues discussed at the workshop, the conclusions of the focus groups (if applicable) and open research directions about the workshop themes.

Additional recommendations

Workshop organizers should foster the creative potential that is tentatively present in a workshop.
Remember that a workshop is NOT a conference!
Ideally, the number of workshop participants ranges from 15 up to 30.

Time allocation

The success of a workshop depends greatly on the results generated on-site. Consequently, enough time should be reserved for collaborative work during the workshop.
Such creative sessions should have a precise topic and goal. The results of such sessions are a fundamental part of the report for the WR.

Reasonable expectations

One should not count on people's instantaneous and proactive participation.
For many reasons, participants tend to prefer a consumer role much more than a producer role during a workshop.
Thus pre-screened presentations, even formally reviewed papers, should usually precede any creative sessions.

Task forces

Large groups tend to behave like an audience, whereas groups of four to eight people are much more likely to interact.
When planning collaborative sessions, consider having several smaller groups rather than one large group in order to foster the generation of new ideas.

Presentation selection

If you decide to allow presentations during the workshop, quality should obviously be the primary criterion for selecting those presentations.
However, in order for a workshop to be productive, consider also having presentations on some new, controversial topics to spark discussion.

For additional questions or clarification, or for your suggestions, please feel free to contact the ECOOP 2003 workshop chairs.