Submitting Workshop Proposals

 

A single Research Group could make a workshop proposal, or some aggregate of Research/Working groups with common topical interest could do as well.

 

Workshop can be proposed by an existing Research group chairs, or by an existing working group, or some independent pre-working or research group organizers. All except the first will require consultation with Area Directors and permission from the GGF steering group:

 

  1. For existing Research Groups, the chairs can propose a workshop directly to the workshop chair. The proposal will be reviewed by the GGF GROC (more on this later).
  2. For Working Groups, they must first contact their Area Director and seek their advice on whether hosting a workshop would be sensible, rather than the standard GGF sessions email work that happen in between. The Area Director, in consultation with the working group chair(s), concludes that the workshop be held, the proposal will be brought forth to the GFSG for necessary endorsement/approval, after which it will be submitted to the workshop chair.
  3. For (potential) research/working groups that are at the BOF state of its lifecycle, similar to Working groups they will need to consult with their assigned area director to make a case that a workshop is necessary in addition to the normal BOF activity at GGF.
  4. As a special case of above, the GROC may suggest a workshop topic, and ask the relevant area directors to solicit a call to their research/working groups to hold a workshop. Such a topic would be something that the GROC may feel would be relevant to the future of the Grid, but not adequately covered by the existing research groups and workshops.
  5. Combinations of the above, i.e., multiple groups can propose a single workshop.
  6. Other “interest groups” officially not sanctioned by the GGF may NOT propose GGF workshops. For example, if a particular set of people will want to host a workshop on a topic such as ”Using the Grid to send Spam”, they must convince an Area Director that this is an appropriate topic which will lead to a research group or working group formation or activity.

 

In order to make a submission, a submission form must be completed with all relevant information, and emailed to the workshop chair, no later than a week after the previous GGF. The form is attached at the end of this document.

 

As an example, a workshop submission for GGF9 (October 2003 in Chicago) needs to be sent to the workshop chair by week after GGF8 (June 24-27, 2003, Seattle), i.e., by July 4th, 2003. The rationale is that various 90-minute GGF session slots for research groups will be used for workshop planning, and as such it is encouraged to finalize the plan for the next workshop with a face-to-face meeting at the previous GGF.

 

Once a workshop proposal is submitted and after preliminary review, the workshop chair should make an announcement to the WG/RG chairs to solicit feedback regarding the relevance of the workshop topic to other groups within GGF. For example, if one RG suggests a workshop on Grid event models, it will be announced to the entire GGF chairs as well as to GSFG, GFAC, and GROC; those with interest in Grid events could join forces to attend or possibly even co-host the workshop.

 

Workshop Proposal Review

 

Starting with GGF9, the workshop will be reviewed by the GGF GROC (Grid Research Oversight Committee).

 

GROC will be formed by the GGF steering group during May and June 2003.  One of the functions of the GROC will be to evaluate the workshop proposals, to make suggestions to help to improve the quality of the workshops, and to oversee the quality of the workshop product. 

 

The current term of appointment for GROC is planned to be initially a year, with renewal possibilities. For the first appointees they will be responsible for refereeing workshops for GGF9 thru GGF11.

 

In the interim, Dennis Gannon (Indiana University) and Satoshi Matsuoka (Tokyo Institute of Technology) will oversee the reviews with input from the GFSG.

 

There will always be a liaison from the GFSG to the GROC and vice versa. In the interim Satoshi Matsuoka will serve as the liaison.

 

Following GGF8, workshops (i.e., for GGF9 and afterwards) will be approved at least 3 months in advance of the GGF meeting at which the workshop will take place. This follows the proposal submission deadline a week after the end of the GGF meeting prior to the meeting at which the workshop will be held.  This will give workshop organizers a reasonable amount of time to recruit speakers and to plan the event, while allowing workshop details to be worked out at the previous GGF.

 

After submissions are collected, the GROC in turn must promptly start the review process. The workshop chair will circulate the proposals for reviews and feedback. The review process will be done mostly off line, and the GROC lead by the chair will decide upon which workshops to be held at the next GGF, considering not only the quality of the workshop proposal, but also importance of the topic relevant to GGF, as well as the # of timeslots available. The GROC may make a choice to accept but postpone a workshop for the GGFs after the immediate ones (e.g., a workshop submitted right after GGF8 may be accepted for GGF10 and not for 9) given the timeliness, location, and space criteria, etc. Also, the type two workshop may be subject to this, as the time duration required to do a proper submission solicitation and reviewing may require longer than three months.

 

Approximately one month prior to the event, workshop organizers will be required to submit a final agenda and list of committed speakers in order to retain their workshop slot on the agenda.

 

Workshop Reporting

 

Workshop organizers will be required to provide a written summary of the workshop within 3 months of the event.  We recommend that the organizers recruit a small team of contributors to use some of the time immediately following the workshop at the GGF event to create a first draft of the workshop report.  This is an essential part of the workshop series.  Workshop reports may take the form of a GGF Informational document, or they may be submitted to peer reviewed journals, or the group may elect to produce a proceedings via a publisher.  In the case of a proceedings or published paper approach, a summary of the workshop should still be provided to the GROC within the 3 month window.

 

Workshop Proposal Submission Form

 

The following minimum information will be required for a workshop proposal to be reviewed by the GROC. 

 

A)     Workshop Title

 

B)     Proposed workshop organizer names and affiliations (possibly incl. review committee for type 2). Be sure to identify yourself if you are a chair of an existing RG/WG.

 

C)     RG/WG that will be involved (including potential RG/WGs as well as RG/WGs up for approval). If you are proposing a workshop without being a full RG, please provide a separate RG submission info, including candidate RG name, charter, area, chairs, BOF descriptions, etc.

 

D)     Scope and Content (a paragraph or two of the workshop description to be put on the program.

 

E)      Potential speakers for type one (invited( and possibly two workshops. Any additional info are welcome including the title of the talk, their abstract, etc. In fact the proposed program may be put here.

 

F)      Past History of hosting a similar workshop inside or outside GGF.

 

G)     Duration of workshop – half day (2-3 slots incl. Breaks) or whole day (4-5 slots)

 

H)     Estimated # of participants (if possible)

 

I)        Publication Plans --- please indicate if you have plan to publish the workshop result with a certain publisher. If left out we will assume that the workshop product will be a GGF Informational Document.

 

(Some of the information above may not apply to your workshop and thus may be left blank.)

 

(Last revised Saturday, April 28, 2003)