The 4th ACM SIGGRAPH Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques in Asia
Conference 12-15 December • Exhibition 13-15 December • Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre
 
Symposium on Apps

Symposium on Apps

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 15 September 2011 (23:59 UTC/GMT)

The increased power, portability and ubiquitous connectivity of smart phones and tablets are causing a fundamental shift in how most of humanity interacts with computing. Some mobile devices already deliver the visual computing power of desktop machines of just a few years ago and the rate of mobile silicon innovation is accelerating.  Increasingly sophisticated development environments, almost frictionless market access through application stores and widespread device availability are creating new opportunities for a wide range of developers to participate in a global market that will soon be worth more than $35 billion annually.

Symposium on Apps is an inaugural program at SIGGRAPH Asia 2011 in Hong Kong to introduce the opportunities and challenges of mobile applications development to the global graphics community.  The program will educate and explore how visual and animation techniques can be used on mobile devices to create compelling end user experiences and to drive the use of advanced graphics capabilities on billions of new devices.

Mobile platforms are democratizing the development of applications and encouraging the active participation of budding young developers and entrepreneurs; for instance, many teenagers can now develop applications for the market. Indeed the mobile lifestyle, the open media computing environment and social networks provide a unified network, a level playing field and an almost friction-free marketing channel to deliver apps to their targeted users. In this ecosystem just about everyone can have a chance to create revenue-generating applications.

For the first Symposium on Apps, we call for participation in the following four categories of sessions:

  1. Presentations: on a specific topic related to mobile applications;
  2. Panel Discussions: among multiple participants from academia or industry;
  3. Workshops: a hands-on, how-to session for your product or research;
  4. Exhibits: showing your work in our mini-exhibition.

Proposed events are welcome under one of the following general themes:

  1. Introductory - catering to an audience getting started in the mobile applications world and may introduce SDKs, third party libraries, game engines, programming skills, pitfalls to avoid, etc.
  2. State of the Art - the greatest and latest advances in the field discussing new techniques, emerging standards, technologies etc.
  3. Marketing - promoting and monetizing your application on application stores, selling your application to a bigger company, developing a user ecosystem, etc.

Topics
We would like to suggest some sample topics – but feel free to also suggest your own:

  1. Mobile user interfaces and interactivity techniques
  2. Marketing of applications and leveraging app stores
  3. Applications and social networks – how do they interact?
  4. Mobile gaming and how it compares to traditional gaming platforms
  5. Android, iOS and other mobile platforms – strengths and weaknesses
  6. Animation techniques and tools relevant to mobile platforms
  7. Making a business grow through mobile applications
  8. End-user market research and new directions for applications
  9. Mobile cameras and image processing
  10. Pitfalls to avoid when developing applications
  11. Use of GPUs in mobile computing
  12. Augmented reality on mobile platforms
  13. Cross platform application development tools and standards
  14. Innovative use of mobile sensors – GPS, accelerometers and cameras
  15. Gesture processing for innovative user interfaces

Format
Symposium on Apps sessions can be offered in one of the following formats:

  1. Short session: this caters for one speaker and lasts around 45 minutes
  2. Standard session: this caters to one or more speakers and lasts around 1h30 minutes
  3. Half-day session: this caters to more than one speaker and comprises of two standard sessions with a 15 minute break.

Exhibits will last for the duration of the Symposium on Apps and will be table top exhibits setup around the Symposium on Apps session room.

Workshop organizers must specify what equipment attendees must bring to the session and how many participants can be accommodated

Note that if you would like to organize both a workshop and presentation, you will need to submit one application for each and specify that the events are linked in your applications.

Note that the committee of Symposium on Apps reserve themselves the right to alter the length of each time-slot based on content and in order to better balance the schedule.

Language
The official language of SIGGRAPH Asia 2011 is English and consequently all content is expected to be in English.

Morgan Aasdam
Symposium on Apps Chair 
City University of Hong Kong 

Erik Noreke
Symposium on Apps Co-Chair
Khronos

Use the Symposium on Apps Submission Form to submit your proposal before the submission deadline (15 September 2011, 23:59 UTC/GMT).

All forms must be completed, and all materials must be successfully uploaded by that time. The submission deadline will be strictly enforced in order to ensure fairness to all submitters and so we encourage submitting well before the deadline.  All proposals must be electronically submitted via the SIGGRAPH Asia 2011 Symposium on Apps Submission Form.  See Uploading Files for complete information.

Please ensure your proposal is relevant to the goals and subject matter of the Symposium on Apps. In particular, your proposal should have a well-defined educational goal and identify a specific set of skills or knowledge that you aim to communicate. If your proposal does not fulfill the criteria outlined by this Symposium on Apps, it might be referred to another program offered by either SIGGRAPH or SIGGRAPH Asia 2011.

It is extremely important that you fill out the Online Submission Form as completely as possible.  Since your proposal is judged on the items you submit in the online form, it is in your best interest to provide as much relevant information as you can. 

Submission Process
Log in to the SIGGRAPH Information System, select "Begin a New Submission", and then select "create" for the Symposium on Apps Submission Form. Instructions there will guide you to a successful completion. When you begin the form, your submission will be assigned a unique submission ID number that will identify your submission throughout the entire review and production process.

Proposals include several sections; to review the complete list of requirements of the Online Submission Form, please see the Frequently Asked Questions section below.

Submission and Authorization Agreement
All submitters must complete the Submission and Authorization Agreement, including entering an electronic signature, before the submission deadline. Incomplete submissions will not be reviewed or accepted.

The Submission and Authorization Agreement is a legal document. It explains the uses SIGGRAPH Asia 2011 makes of presented material and requires you to acknowledge that you have permission to use this material. This may involve seeking clearance from your employer or from others who have loaned you material, such as videotapes and slides. In addition, this agreement asks if ACM SIGGRAPH may use your materials for conference and organization promotional material in exchange for full author/artist credit information.

For a better understanding of the SIGGRAPH Asia 2011 Submission and Authorization Agreement please review the Submission and Authorization Agreement Explanation.

Copyright Permissions
All materials presented at SIGGRAPH Asia 2011 and published in SIGGRAPH publications must have appropriate permissions from any copyright holders or holders of other rights. It is crucial that presenters either own or receive the appropriate permissions before presentation. Work that you perform for third parties, such as images created for a film, or research done for a corporate laboratory, may have restrictions on its use. It is the responsibility of the presenter to know what permissions may be necessary, and to obtain them. The Submission and Authorization Agreement is your certification to SIGGRAPH Asia 2011 that you have obtained all necessary permissions.

English Review Service
If English is not your first language; you may use the English Review Service to get help with the text of your proposal. Please note that the English Review Service has a deadline to two weeks before the final Symposium on Apps deadline and that only your abstract and outline will be reviewed.

Each proposal is extensively reviewed by peers from the SIGGRAPH community. Reviews are chosen for their familiarity with the content of the proposal. In their reviews, jurors consider factors such as:

  1. Relevance: Does the workshop cover both the topics of SIGGRAPH and Symposium on Apps.
  2. Concept: How exceptional are the ideas, problems, solutions, aesthetics, etc. presented in this submission? How coherently does the submission convey its overall concept? Is the concept similar to existing ones, or does it stand out as unique and original?
  3. Novelty: How new and fresh is this work? Is it a new, ground-breaking approach to an old problem, or is it an existing approach with a slightly new twist? Second, you should evaluate you work in the context of other approaches where appropriate: Is it faster? Easier to use? Does it give better results? Is it more accurate?
  4. Interest: Will conference attendees want to see this material? Will it inspire them? Are the results or approaches appealing to a broad audience? This is partly a measure of how broad the potential audience is and partly a measure of the overall clarity and novelty of the submission. A submission in a very niche area is more likely to be accepted if the results are exceptionally better than what exists already, or if the proposed solution might be applicable to other areas.
  5. Quality, Craft, and Completeness: This is a measure of how well-written the proposal is and the quality of the supporting materials. The proposal must effectively communicate their proposal in enough detail and clarity so that the jury can evaluate it.
  6. Speaker Expertise and Ability to Cover the Topic: Ability to communicate ideas and to teach, as well as language skills, will be reviewed. So it is really important that you explain how you are going to convey your points: What is the tone of your event? What kind of learning material and techniques will you use to support you presentation?

The final submission score is based on a combination of these factors. For example, a submission that is high quality, has broad appeal, and contains something new is likely to be accepted, while a submission that is incremental, of interest to only a small number of people, and poorly written will probably be rejected.

Event organizers should learn the results of the review process by mid-October 2011.

Closer to the event the organizer will confirm the schedule, and any presentation, workshop or exhibit needs. Contributor of Presentations, Panels, or Workshops will be required to submit publication-ready materials about one month prior to the event.

Creating good presentation materials is a time-consuming task that can provide much more materials than presented in person. See this example of good Course Notes provided by the Courses program of SIGGRAPH Asia 2011. Presenters should take this time commitment into account as they plan their schedule for the months before the conference.

Deadlines and Extensions

What is the submission deadline?
The workshop proposal submission deadline is 15 September, 23:59 UTC/GMT. This is 7:59 pm, 15 September in New York; 4:59 pm, 15 September in Los Angeles; and 7:59 am, 16 September in Hong Kong. Double-check the submission date and time for your region basing yourself on 15 June, 23:59 UTC/GMT deadline.

Can I submit after the deadline?
No. The deadline is absolute. All submissions receive equal consideration up to the published deadline. Please respect other contributors and allow time for unforeseen circumstances in your submission, including (but not limited to) network connectivity, equipment failures, job impacts, life or family events, etc. These personal circumstances are outside of SIGGRAPH Asia 2011's direct control and cannot be accommodated fairly.

Why is this so absolute?
Primarily, the answer is fairness and equal opportunity for consideration. This respects the contribution process for all submissions. Secondly, the deadlines were designed to maximize submission development and quality for all contributors, including those contributing to other SIGGRAPH Asia 2011 programs. Submission deadlines are set as late as possible, but they must also support quality in review, production, and delivery at SIGGRAPH Asia 2011.

Are partial or incomplete submissions considered?
Incomplete submissions are not guaranteed a review. Contributors are required to minimally meet all submission requirements by the published deadline. The Committee will evaluate the merit of each completed proposal as it was submitted at the deadline even if it does not meet the author's personal quality objectives. Please allow yourself enough time to meet your own quality goals.

How will SIGGRAPH Asia 2011 address network failures?
SIGGRAPH Asia 2011 is only responsible for the availability of the submission server. If the Symposium on Apps Chair is notified of a hardware or service failure in the submission system, the Symposium on Apps Chair will authorize an appropriate adjustment (and will prominently post notices at several locations). All other network failures between your location and the SIGGRAPH server will not affect the submission deadline. Please submit early to avoid connectivity-support problems or last-minute submission-server performance issues.

The SIGGRAPH Asia 2011 English Review Service failed our schedule, so it is SIGGRAPH Asia 2011's fault that our proposal is late. Can we have an extension?
No. The English Review Service is a volunteer organization, and is administered separately from the SIGGRAPH Asia 2011 Symposium on Apps program. Although they will do their best to help, they can make no guarantee of performance or service turn-around. While the deadline for submitting your proposal for review by the English Review Service is two weeks before the Symposium on Apps deadline, we recommend that you submit your work as early as possible.

Submissions

Why is it necessary to specify an intended audience? The average SIGGRAPH conference attendee should be sufficient detail, no?
No. The attendee population is actually very diverse. It includes different experience levels, different backgrounds, and different interests in technical and artistic topics. Your detailed audience identification aids proposal evaluation by the reviewers (to ensure that your material is appropriate to the audience you wish to reach), by the Symposium on Apps Committee (for program balancing), and for proper marketing to interested conference attendees.

Does SIGGRAPH Asia 2011 tend to favor or avoid specific levels of material (beginner, intermediate, advanced)?
While we do specify introductory-level events in our general themes, we do not favor or avoid specific levels of material. SIGGRAPH Asia 2011 will serve a wide international audience of many capabilities. The richest, most engaging materials are desired no matter what their level. This is your opportunity to address a community need with your expertise. The Symposium on Apps Committee will offer the best-balanced program possible with available submissions and resources. This includes the need for a good mixture of beginning, intermediate, and advanced presentations.

We have a great idea for an untried topic. Should we submit it?
Absolutely! While this is the first iteration of Symposium on Apps and most topics are novel, we seek innovation both in topics and presentation. New ideas that relate to some aspect of computer graphics in mobile computing and interactive techniques are most welcome for consideration. You should clearly state this relevance in the rationale of your proposal.

Do you support anything other than Portable Document Format (PDF)? It is easier for me to provide files in (your file type here). Everyone can read those, right?
No, please submit in PDF format. Reviewers come from many backgrounds and use many operating systems (Windows, Mac OS, Linux, etc.). PDF provides easy standardization (universal viewer support, graphics, embedded fonts, etc.) for both the reviewer and the proposer (for example, it preserves intentional formatting by the submitter). Even ASCII clear text is not "universal" due to carriage-return differences, column widths, lack of graphics, etc. While we are unable to provide document conversion software that generates PDF output, please note that many websites provide such services. Keying in the following keywords: "online word to pdf converter" in any major search engine's search box will give you a list of such services.

What are good-quality presentation/workshop notes?
Think of your notes as being the textbook chapters that you summarize in your presentation. Good-quality notes are any combination of materials (text, images, video, source code, demos, etc.) that can assist people during your presentation and beyond the scope of the auditorium. Copies of the slides, images, and videos used during the presentation are common, but by themselves are not enough. They should be annotated with additional detailed explanations of complex concepts, elaborations on related topics that could not be fit into the time of the presentation, mathematical derivations, etc.

Clear examples, tutorials, explanation of techniques, annotations from your experience, and program source code, for example, are always appreciated by the attendees. This material should help attendees accurately understand your presentation and build a useful context for application of what they have learned.

Please refer to the Courses' sample Course Notes that help gauge what would be a quality set of notes for your Workshop Notes.

Our presentation/workshop notes are completely done. Should we put them all in the download area as part of our submission?
No. A representative sampling of the quality of your notes is all that is required. Complete sets can overwhelm and complicate the review process. It is better to show a subsection that demonstrates detail, annotation, and supplemental materials than provide the entire set.

In addition to the Presentation / Workshop Notes sample PDF, can I submit additional materials (audio, video, animations, etc.) with my submission?
While we only accept a sample PDF of the notes to be submitted with your proposal, you are encouraged to include a list of additional materials with your proposal. If you have samples of materials available for consideration with your proposal, please provide a reference (for example, a URL) to their location.

Upon Acceptance

Our proposal was accepted. Now it is time to submit our Presentation / Workshop Notes. Unfortunately, we have not had time to complete everything to the level of examples that we submitted during the review process. This will be okay, right?
No. We may have a serious problem. If the final materials fail to meet or exceed the quality of the accepted proposal, the Symposium on Apps Chair may decide to cancel your event.

I'm an event organizer who has one or more lecturers/presenters who have not completed their notes. Your publication deadline is fast approaching. Can we have an extension?
No. Unfortunately, all deadlines (proposal, Workshop Notes, etc.) are closely tied to publication and production. They cannot be extended. In absolute worst-case scenarios, the Symposium on Apps Chair may decide to cancel your session.

15 September 2011 (23:59 UTC/GMT)
Submission deadline

September - October 2011
Jury reviews

Mid-October 2011
Acceptance notification

November 2011
Final publication-ready materials due

12-15 December 2011
SIGGRAPH Asia 2011

13-14 December 2011
SIGGRAPH Asia 2011 Symposium on Apps