How to Submit

• Overview
• Preparing Your Submission
• Where to Submit
• Review Criteria
• Conflict of Interest
• Plagiarism

Upon Acceptance

• Registration
• Finalizing Accepted BoFs
• Proceedings

On-site

• Schedule and Location
• Infrastructure

How to Submit

Overview

Birds of a Feather (BoF) are non-commercial and focus on community building through interactive presentations and discussions covering a wide variety of topics.

Successful BoF submissions will often involve any combination of presentations, audience discussion, roadmap discussions, question and answer periods, and community meet ups. Before submitting, consider whether your proposed session fits this description. Consider also whether there is another group of people who are likely to submit a similar BoF and whether you should merge your proposal with theirs.

Upon review of your BoF proposal, the BoF committee may suggest combining with other proposals.

Note that BoFs are not the appropriate venue for:

• Vendors advertising their latest product release or feature (for this, consider the Exhibitor Forum);
• Sessions consisting solely or mainly of presentations or discussion among a small group of experts (for this, submit a proposal for a panel); or
• Project team meetings that are not focused on building community (e.g., by not allowing non-project team members in the discussion).

Preparing Your Submission

A BoF submission includes:

• Session leader information;
• Selection of a topic area that best fits your BoF (see below);
• Abstract (100-word maximum);
• Long description (500-word maximum) clearly stating goal(s), topic, relevance to the expected HPC audience, and the expected outcome; and
• Session format information, including a description (150-word maximum) of how you plan to organize the BoF session.

Topics

• Algorithms
• Applications
• Architectures & Networks
• Clouds & Distributed Computing
• Data Analytics, Visualization & Storage
• Education
• Machine Learning and HPC
• Meetings
• Performance Measurement, Modeling, and Tools
• Programming Systems
• State of the Practice
• System Software
• Other

If none of the topic areas fit, please select “Other” on the submission form. Please select “Meetings” for society or SC meetings and TOP 500.

Session Format

While we do not prescribe how a BoF should be organized, BoFs should have a format that ensures high levels of audience interaction. Talks and presentations should be oriented toward provoking community discussion, rather than being purely informational. An example of a useful presentation in this sense is a roadmap update to open feedback on how to orient future efforts in an open-source software project.

Where to Submit

BoF proposals are submitted via the SC submissions website. View a sample submission form.

Review Criteria

A proposal must be submitted for all BoFs. Even if your BoF has been held at a previous SC conference, you must submit a new proposal to be reviewed and evaluated against the other submissions.

Selected BoF proposals are ranked in terms of their potential for community building, relevance to the expected audience, expected level of audience participation, and the timeliness of the topic. Other criteria may be considered as well. BoFs are expected to limit the inclusion of vendor-specific content.

Conflict of Interest

Please review the SC Conference Conflict of Interest guidelines before submitting your BoF proposal.

Plagiarism

Please review the ACM guidelines on identifying plagiarism.

Upon Acceptance

Registration

All BoF speakers, moderators, and session leaders must register for the conference and pay for either a Technical Program or Exhibits Only registration. These registration types include access to all BoF sessions, Tuesday–Thursday.

BoF speakers, moderators, and session leaders do not receive honoraria or discounted admission to any conference sessions. By submitting a BoF proposal to SC, you are making a commitment to attend the conference and pay a registration fee upon acceptance of your submission.

Workshop and Tutorial registrations do not include Birds of a Feather access. See more information at SC19 Registration.

Finalizing Accepted BoFs

Upon acceptance of your BoF, the session leader must submit an updated abstract and biographical information for each session leader to the SC submissions website before September 15, 2019 to be included in the online SC Schedule.

Proceedings

BoF materials (i.e., title, abstract, presenter information) are made available in the SC19 Technical Program Archive upon submission of final BoF information to the SC submissions website before September 15, 2019.

On-site

Schedule and Location

BoFs are generally held in parallel tracks at approximately the following times:

• Tuesday, November 19, 12:15–1:15 pm and 5:15–6:45 pm
• Wednesday, November 20, 12:15–1:15 pm and 5:15–6:45 pm
• Thursday, November 21, 12:15–1:15 pm

Your BoF should be scheduled within this timeframe. If you have a potential scheduling conflict please let us know as early as possible. We will try to accommodate you, but we will not be able to accommodate all requests.

Infrastructure

BoFs are assigned either a classroom or a theater room equipped with standard AV facilities:

• Projector
• Microphone and podium
• Wireless lapel microphone or wireless handheld microphone
• Projection screen

Current SC Conference policies and procedures do not include the following in your BoF room:

• Poster boards
• Round tables
• Wired Ethernet connection
• Power strips on the tables or under the chairs
• Recording of the BoF

We do not anticipate being able to accommodate any requests for additional equipment or reconfiguration of the provided equipment and furniture.

Questions about BoF Submissions?
Contact Birds of a Feather