Workshop Submissions

Important Dates
Deadline for Workshop submissions: March 19, 2007
Notification of acceptance or rejection: April 2, 2007
Deadline for camera-ready copy: July 30, 2007
Conference begins: October 21, 2007

Overview
OOPSLA workshops provide a creative and collaborative environment where attendees meet to surface, discuss, and solve challenging problems related to a variety of research topics. Workshops provide a great opportunity for researchers and practitioners to establish as well as foster communities on these topics.

The topics of workshops as well as their formats are diverse. For example, workshops may provide an opportunity for people working in a particular area to coordinate efforts and to establish a collective plan of action, to collaborate on a book, to seek contribution, and to discuss and share ideas on a hot new emerging technology.

Workshops are either full or half-day events that occur on the two days before the main conference. Attendance and participation in a workshop are managed by the workshop organizers. To ensure that a sufficiently focused group participates in a workshop, workshop organizers typically request that a short position paper be submitted by potential attendees. Additional criteria may be used by the organizers to select participants, as long as the criteria are clearly specified in the workshop's call for participation. Workshop organizers are responsible for advertising their workshop appropriately to attract attendees.

We encourage proposals for innovative, well-focused workshops on a broad spectrum of topics. We particularly encourage proposals that seek to move ahead the field of software engineering.

Some possible topic areas include, but are not restricted to:

Methodologies and processes
• Programming and programming languages
• Technologies
• Modeling
• Architecture & Design
• Systems & Applications
• Testing
• Team and cultural issues
• Collaborative development
• Middleware
• Education
• Aspect-Orientation
• Development tools
• New paradigms and approaches to computation

Each workshop must have at least two organizers, preferably from different organizations. Workshop organizers and participants must register for the conference and the workshop.

Each workshop is required to create a poster based on the workshop and its results, and then present the poster in the conference poster session. Presenting the poster at the poster session serves as an effective means to get immediate feedback on the workshop results from OOPSLA attendees. In addition, we expect organizers of an accepted workshop to maintain a web site to make participant papers, workshop schedule, etc. available to participants; to help advertise the workshop; and, after the workshop, to serve as a vehicle to disseminate information about the workshop and its conclusions to the community.

A workshop proposal must include the following information:

Main theme and goals: The proposal must explain the importance of the workshop theme to the OOPSLA community, and why it is appropriate for OOPSLA. Goals should be clearly stated. For example, the main goal may be to build collaboration for future research, to identify key obstacles in the adoption of a particular technology, to pool experience in a particular area, and so on.

Abstract: The proposal must include a 150-word abstract that summarizes the theme and goals of the workshop; if the workshop is accepted, this abstract will be published in the advance program and the final program.

Workshop organizers: The proposal must list the workshop organizers. Workshop organizers are responsible for advertising the workshop, reviewing potential participants' submissions, running the workshop, and collating the results of the workshop for dissemination to others. Workshop organizers should be listed, together with their contact information. The primary organizer of the workshop and a contact person should be specified (they need not necessarily be the same person). For each organizer, the proposal should describe his/her background (expertise in the area, and previous experience running workshops) and also identify his/her responsibilities for this workshop.

Previous related workshops: Highlight any previous workshops on the same or related themes, stating where and when they took place. In particular explain how this workshop builds upon any previous activity.

Expected number of participants: The ideal, minimum, and maximum number of participants should be specified.

Workshop advertisement: Describe how you plan to advertise your workshop to ensure sufficient participation.

Workshop preparation: Workshop participants will be expected to prepare for the workshop, e.g. by reading some background material or the position statements of other participants. Your proposal should describe how you plan to encourage participants to prepare appropriately, and how you will make preparation materials available. For example, reading material and activities could be posted to the workshop web site. In this case, the proposal should explain what materials will be available and when.

Workshop activities and format:The format of the workshop should be described and a timetable given. Please state clearly if a full-day or a half-day workshop is proposed. You should consider, for example, whether there will be any introductory material, whether there will be any paper presentations, any panel discussion, debate, or focus groups, and how such groups will report back to the other participants.

Post-workshop activities: The proposal must describe how the results of the workshop will be disseminated to the wider community. For example, what output will be put on the web page, how summaries of discussions, key issues, and shared research agendas will be published, and so on. Each workshop must prepare and present a poster at the OOPSLA poster session.

Special requirements: Please specify any special requirements.

Submission Process

Electronic submission of proposals is required through the OOPSLA on-line submission system. You will receive confirmation by email that your proposal has been received and is complete. Proposals may be modified online up until the submission deadline.

Workshop proposals received will be reviewed by the Workshop Selection Committee to determine a high quality and appropriate mix for the conference.

Proposals will be reviewed against the following criteria:

Significance: Does the proposal present a compelling case for the importance of the topic area? Is this done succinctly and completely? Are the goals related clearly and appropriately to the topic area?

Relevance: Are the themes and goals of current interest to the OOPSLA community? Has the topic been covered before? Is there anything new being discussed? In particular, is the topic likely to be attractive to OOPSLA attendees?

Workshop format: Is the format clearly described and does it encourage a high level of interaction between the participants?

Appropriateness: Is a workshop the right forum to address the theme and goals or does the proposal fit better into another type of OOPSLA event?

Organizers: Are there at least two organizers and do they represent a reasonably varied cross-section of the community? Has the requisite background knowledge and experience of the organizers been established?

Completeness: Does the proposal cover all the information specified in the guidelines stated above?

Program Committee

• Jutta Eckstein, independent consultant, Germany
• Aniruddha Gokhale, Vanderbilt University, USA
• Prashant Jain, IBM India Research Lab, Delhi, India
• Michael Kircher, Siemens Corporate Research, Germany (chair)
• Gail Murphy, University of British Columbia, Canada

For additional information, clarifications, or questions, please contact the workshop chair at workshops@oopsla.org.