Conference Policy

The Association for Logic Programming (ALP) has supported two tracks of major Logic Programming conferences a year: the International Conference on Logic Programming (ICLP) and the International Logic Programming Symposium (ILPS), (formerly named the North American Conference on Logic Programming (NACLP)).  Since 1999, ALP has been holding only one conference per year, namely, the ICLP.

If you are interested in organizing a future ICLP, then you need to make a proposal to the Executive Committee (EC) of the ALP. A proposal consists of volunteering to be General Chair of the meeting and to be responsible for the budget and local arrangements in a proposed city. A proposal should include some discussion of any special features of the proposal that would bear on its selection.  Further guidelines for what a proposal might include are given below.

The Executive Committee of the ALP (EC) will select one from the proposals submitted (or solicit further proposals). The EC will independently select a Program Chair for the meeting to be responsible for the technical program.

2. CONFERENCE ORGANIZATION

2.1 Personal detailed description of contents of a proposal

The following may give you an idea of what a proposal to organize an LP meeting (conference or symposium) might contain. What you have to do is to give enough information so that the ALP executive committee has confidence that you would be able to bring it off, and it would be a good and profitable meeting.  The proposal should answer the following questions, should highlight its strengths and point out its vulnerabilities.  Note that some of these questions (e.g. timing) may best be answerable at this stage through constraints.

• Where will the meeting be held?
• When will it be held?
• Who will lead the general and the local organization? Have they organized such events before? If so, which ones? Who will handle registrations, local organization, etc. Will you need to pay some company to do it, or can you handle it yourself, within your own organization? If so, what experience do they/you have and what support will they give you?
• What are the conference facilities at the proposed site (hotel, resort, university facility)? What is their track record (e.g. how did previous conferences held at that location do?) Describe conference rooms, space for informal meetings, opportunities for entertainment, possibilities for conference banquet/cruise/social event, space for allied workshops or conferences before and after the meeting (e.g. LOPSTR (International Workshop on Logic Program Synthesis and Transformation), LPNMR (Logic Programming and Non-Monotonic Reasoning), NLULP – Natural Language Understanding and LP- , or TAPD- Tabulation in Parsing and Deduction).
• Do you have ideas for attracting exhibitors, or getting outside contributions to the meeting?
• What will be the financial model? What kind of outlay is expected? What will be the registration fees?  What is the break-even point (in terms of number of attendees)? How many attendees would you anticipate? Which local organizations/industries might sponsor the event (or sub-events, e.g. cruise, invited speakers/tutorialists etc), and with what arrangements/conditions (usually sponsors are acknowledged in all conference materials, including Proceedings)? Does your National Research Council have grants specifically designed for supporting conferences, for instance for invited speakers or for students?
• How accessible and “safe” is the site? How will participants travel to and from the site? Can deals be negotiated with an “official” airline carrier for the conference?
• What kind of Internet connectivity and computational support can be provided at the site, for presenters as well as participants?
• Will volunteer student assistance be available in the organization?
• What local research groups in logic programming will be supporting the organization activity?
• Will someone from your organizing group be available to talk with available organizers at the previous LP event?
• Do you have any special reason you’d like to organize it? (e.g. to emphasize a particular subarea of LP, or to raise the consciousness of LP in your country, or to reward hard-working contributers?)

A meeting proposal is essentially a kind of sales job to the executive committee. They have to be convinced that, of the alternatives available, yours will be the best for the LP community.

If you are asked to organize it, then you will be appointed general conference chair, and the executive committee will choose and appoint a program chair for it. You will be asked to prepare a budget for the meeting. Examples of previous budgets are available from the conference coordinator.

Organizing a conference can be a lot of work, but it is a wonderful service to the community, and it can be very rewarding personally.

3. Responsibilities of CONFERENCE GENERAL CHAIR

The responsibilities of the conference General Chair include:

• preparation and management of the conference budget, local arrangements, exhibits, decision on and invitation of the banquet speaker, additional sponsorships.
• active seeking of external funds to cover the hotel costs and possibly travel expenses of all invited speakers.  Invited speakers DO get free registration to the conference. If the external funds permit, a similar arrangement should be made for invited tutorial speakers. In any case, these costs should not be incurred on ALP.
• setting the price of the proceedings, the shipping cost to get the proceedings to the conference site, and estimating the number of proceedings to order, in consultation with the Conference Coordinator. (The number of proceedings ordered must be consistent with the number of expected registrations and the budget.)
• advertising, including the initial call for papers, and for publication of the final program.
• accounting for all the monies (i.e., performs as conference treasurer unless another is appointed.)  Appropriate procedures, which will be available from the ALP treasurer, must be followed so that all monetary transactions can be audited.
• preparing and distributing calls for papers and participation. Publicity is needed at two levels:

1. publicizing the call for papers to maximize the number of high quality submissions; and,
2. publicizing the call for participation to maximize attendance to the conference and affiliated workshops.

• Workshops: If there are to be informal workshops either before or after the meeting, which has been customary, the General Chair is responsible for appointing a workshop coordinator (or doing it him/herself) to organize the workshops. The conference budget normally includes the cost of the meeting rooms for the workshops (but usually this is gratis, or minimal, from the Hotel). See the section on Workshop Organization later.
• Tutorials have also been associated with meetings. If the tutorials are to be out of the mainstream of the meeting, then the General Chair is responsible for their organization. If the tutorials are inline with the paper presentations, then that responsibility falls to the Program Chair. The General Chair and the Program Chair will jointly decide which form of tutorials to hold. In either case, the cost, if any, of the tutorials must be included in the conference budget. (Pre-conference tutorials must be budgeted to at least cover their own expenses.)
• Unless s/he explicitly declines, the General Chair should be a member of the Program Committee for all duties (with possible exclusion of paper reviews, due to lack of time.)

4. PRACTICAL INFORMATIONS FOR (APPROVED) GENERAL CHAIRPERSONS

• The preliminary budget should be submitted to the budget auditor:
  Gopal Gupta, gupta@utdallas.edu

• The seed money request (up to US $10,000 ) should be submitted to the treasurer:
  Pat Hill, hill@comp.leeds.ac.uk
  Note: no seed money will be provided before the budget auditor has approved the budget.

• Every request of fund from participants should be forwarded to the conference coordinator:
  Gopal Gupta, gupta@utdallas.edu

• The current list of ALP members should be requested from the Conference Coordinator:
  Gopal Gupta, gupta@utdallas.edu
• The contact person for ALP proceedings at Springer Verlag:
  Karin Henzold: henzold@springer.de

5. PROGRAM CHAIR & COMMITTEE

• The Program Chair for an ALP conference is selected and appointed by the ALP Executive Committee (EC). The Program Chair (before contacting any prospective PC members) will make an initial proposal to the EC (normally electronically, and through the Conference Coordinator (CC)) of a list of names of people suggested to make up the program committee (normally electronically.)

  The program Chair will aim at gender diversity as well as at geographic and research area diversity when composing program committees.  The list will be annotated to indicate how various subfields within LP are adequately covered, and to show an appropriate geographical distribution of members. The list may indicate alternate members.

  The EC will, in a timely fashion, make comments and suggestions to the Program Chair, who will then revise the list according to the suggestions (with further interaction with the EC, if necessary) to a final proposal, which the EC must finally approve. At this time, the Program Chair should formally contact the prospective members. Minor adjustments, due to inability of some nominees to serve, is left to the judgment of the Program Chair in consultation with the ALP CC.

• Program Chair (in consultation with the program committee) is responsible for all of the technical program, including the call-for-papers, the choice of invited speakers (except the banquet speaker), and any inline tutorials. The Program Chair will chair the program committee meeting which determines the accepted papers.

• The Program Chair is the editor of the Proceedings of the meeting. This involves working with the editor at Springer Verlag to set dates for when the final papers must be at Springer Verlag.

  Also involved are the price of the proceedings, the shipping cost to get the proceedings to the conference site. The number of proceedings ordered must be consistent with the number of expected registrations and the budget.

• A program committee member may submit to the conference at most ONE paper on which s/he is author or co-author. (The Program Chair may, at his/her discretion, forbid PC members from any submission. In this case, the members must be so notified at the time they are asked to serve on the PC. The Program Chair may also lift this one paper restriction  in consultation with the ALP EC.)  The Program Chair is must not be the (co-)author  of any submitted paper.

• Papers submitted to ICLP and other LP conferences must not have been previously published or currently submitted for publication elsewhere.

• Authors whose papers are accepted are expected to be at the conference to present their papers. If an author has an usual need and is unable otherwise to attend the conference, the ALP will do its best to provide some funds (out of a fixed budget) to support attendance. Such petitions are to be made to the CC.

• Invited speakers do not normally receive a fee or support for their attendance. They DO get free registration to the conference. In case the invited speaker is not in the mainstream of the field and the Program Chair (in consultation with the Conference Chair) wants to attract that speaker, the conference chair can include support for the invited speaker. That support must come out of the conference budget.

• Tutorialists do not normally receive a fee or support for their attendance. They DO NOT get free registration to the conference. In case the invited tutorial speaker is not in the mainstream of the field and the Program Chair (in consultation with the Conference Chair) wants to attract that tutorialist, the conference chair can include support for the tutorialist and waive his/her registration fee.  All such support must come out of the conference budget.

• Program Committee meeting: no funds should be allocated, except for seed money to host it, for general things the organization hosting the PC meeting cannot cover. PC members are expected to pay their own way to the PC meeting. (Exceptions can be decided by the conference organizers after consultation with the CC.)

• PC members are expected to pay their way to conference if they attend. In exceptional cases they could apply to the CC  to get support from the monies allocated to the conference by the ALP. It has been customary to have a dinner for the PC during the PC meeting and for this to be paid out of the conference budget. Non-attending PC members may obtain a copy of the Proceedings free-of-charge by applying to ALP central.

• The Program Chair may request that his/her reasonable travel expenses by paid from the conference budget. This should be done only in cases where the Program Chair cannot find support for his/her travel from other sources (such as a research or travel grant, or his/her institution or company).

• Members of the PC who are reviewing the same paper are encouraged to interact through email, before the PC meeting, to explore and resolve disagreements.  The Program Chair is encouraged to use  a public domain web-based conference manager (e.g., START) for managing the paper submission and selection process.

• Inclusion of poster session(s) is encouraged and up to the PC chair to organize, either from a separate Call-for-Posters or from selections from submitted regular papers. Posters should appear as part of the published proceedings distributed at the conference.

• Inclusion of a separate applications track with slightly different reviewing standards is also encouraged.  These paper should appear as part of the published proceedings distributed at the conference.

• The Conference Chair in consultation with the Program Chair and the Program Committee may elect to provide a cash or in-kind  award for the best paper,  the best applications paper, the best student paper, or whatever criteria they wish to come up with.  The cost of the award should be included in the conference budget.

• The Conference Chair in consultation with the Program Chair and the Program Committee may elect to provide a cash or in-kind  award for the best paper,  the best applications paper, the best student paper, or whatever criteria they wish to come up with.  The cost of the award should be included in the conference budget.

• ICLP has traditionally had a Prolog programming competition, organized on one of the evenings during the conference. The Conference Chair and the Program Chair are urged to continue this tradition. The Conference Chair may designate a competition coordinator to organize the competition (Bart Demoen has served this role for the past several conferences). The Conference Chair should also provide logistical support for organizing the competition, including space, machines, and software that may be needed. All expenses, including those for prizes given to the winners, should be charged to the conference budget.

The Program Chair should proceed in his/her preparations according to the following schedule.

• 15 months (before the conference date): Send the proposed program committee to the Executive Committee or the President. The EC will comment on this proposal within two weeks and, if needed, will propose some alternative candidates.
• 14 months: Extend the invitations to the program committee members.
• 13 months: Finalize the final form of the program committee and initiate a discussion on invited speakers and tutorialists with the program committee.
• 12 months: Send out the invitations to invited speakers and tutorialists.  The invited speakers should be asked to submit a paper to the proceedings. Sample letters are available from the administrative secretary.
• 7-8 months: Deadline for submissions.
• 5 months: Notification of acceptance/rejection.
• 3 months: Deadline for the final text.

6. ORGANIZATION OF CONFERENCE WORKSHOPS

The General Chair, in consultation with the Program Chair, may appoint a Workshop Coordinator. The Workshop Coordinator will have the responsibility of:

• Preparing and advertising the call for workshop proposals
• Making selections from these proposals
• Scheduling the selected workshops
• Helping in the management of workshop registration
• Overseeing the printing/pricing/distribution of proceedings of these workshops
• Providing general supervision for the workshops.
• Acting as a liaison between the General Chair and the individual workshop organizers.

The ultimate organizational authority/responsibility for conference workshops, of course,  rests with the General Chair. The organization of the individual workshops (call for papers, selection of papers, developing the workshop program, call for participation, etc.) will be done by the proposer(s) of the workshop. The Workshop Coordinator should avoid multiple workshops on similar topics and should explore the possibility of merging such workshops.

The call for workshop proposals should be made at about the same time as the first call for papers for the main conference. The selection of workshops should be done latest by the deadline date set for submission of papers to the main conference. The call for papers for individual workshops should be sent out by the workshop proposer(s)
latest by the deadline date that the Program Chair has set for receiving reviews from referees.  The publicity of the workshops should be in full swing by the time the acceptance/rejections results for the papers submitted to the main conference are  communicated. The workshop proceedings and the workshop program should be ready at least two weeks in advance of the deadline for early registration for the main conference.

7. TRAVEL AID

The ALP may provide the Conference Coordinator (CC) with a budget for each adopted conference; this budget will be used on behalf of the conference to (1) waive registrations fees, partially or totally, (2) contribute to travel expenses in order to support students or others who are in serious need.

This money may also be used to provide support to workshops associated with the conference. The CC will determine how the money is to be distributed.

The amount of money allocated will be determined on a conference-by-conference basis, taking the ALP’s current fiscal situation into account.  Depending on the form of event, this amount was in in the past in the range US$4000 to US$7000.

The following guidelines in the allocation of funds to individuals are suggested: People in the following situations should be given priority: (a) one who is to present an accepted paper at the conference, (b) one from an area with obvious economic difficulties, (c) students, (d) researchers coming back to, or retraining  into, our field after a period of child raising, for instance.

The CC will collaborate with the conference organizer and program chairperson to take their suggestions into account and to use the money appropriately to meet the needs of the conference. A major goal should be to maximize the number of people able to attend, so in general smaller amounts of money should be given to larger numbers of people, rather than vice versa.

The monies will be distributed in the following way. The CC will determine who is to receive what amount. This will be conveyed to the conference organizers who will deduct the amount from the registration fee (if it is done in time) and will, at the conference, give a check to the recipient for the remaining. This will guarantee that the recipients indeed attend the conference and will give them the money in such a way that they can use it to pay hotel or other expenses at the conference. The conference accounting will account for these monies separately, so they can be effectively charged to the ALP, and not directly to the conference bottom-line.

Calls for papers and programs will include a mention of the availability of funds for supporting people in need.  In the past student speakers and other speakers in real need were supported to the level necessary (but cheapest travel/accommodations were required.) Support at a level of US$200 is recommended. A higher level will be provided only in case of great need.

8. BUDGET POLICY

• The budget auditor for all conferences provides guidance on budget preparation, and s/he MUST approve the budget before any conference expenses are incurred. After the budget is approved the ALP can provide funds in advance of the meeting to underwrite expenses incurred up to US$10,000, unless very special needs arise. In addition the budget auditor must review all hotel contracts before they are signed.

  Currently Gopal Gupta, the conference coordinator, is the budget auditor.

• The ALP is the sponsoring organization for these meetings. As such the ALP gets the profit or incurs the loss. Other organizations can be “co-sponsors” and have their name on conference advertising, but they will not share in the profits or losses (unless there are exceptional circumstances and the ALP Executive Committee agrees otherwise.)

• The conference budget should be designed to break-even at quite a pessimistic estimate of attendance. The idea is that a conference should be profitable. The conferences are the major source of income for the ALP and these monies are needed make advances for future conferences, support student participation in ALP activities, to support ongoing administrative efforts, etc.

• Conference budget should include the cost for proceedings. The conference organisers should contact Springer Verlag directly, decide the number of copies, liase the price and handle payment.  The conference organisers should also decide how much they should charge for extra copies sold at conference.  It should be less than the bookshop selling price, by at least 10%, possibly even the cost price, if the conference is doing well and it does not need any extra money to make the required profit.

• The shipping charges are paid by the conference organizers directly. The conference organisers must make sure that prior to the conference they have a WRITTEN agreement with Springer Verlag on the cost of the proceedings and transportation (useful for budgeting, too), and that all Springer Verlag bills conform to this agreement before they are paid.  Springer gives steep discounts for copies bought for distribution at the conference. In the past this discount has been at least 45%, with the discount increasing to 47.5% if 100+ copies are bought and to 50% if 200+ copies are bought. Proceedings are provided free for PC members who cannot attend the conference. (If they attend their registration covers their copy.) This does not have to be budgeted since it will come from the extra free copies that the ALP gets from Springer Verlag. Extra proceedings that come to the ALP are NOT to be sold at the conference.  Such monies cannot be included as projected income in the budget.  However, these extra copies can be given either to attendees whose registration has been waived (such as the invited speaker, the tutorialists, attendees supported by ALP) to reduce the cost of the conference  or to PC members who did not attend the conference as mentioned earlier.

• The budget policy regarding invited speakers, tutorialists and Program Committee meeting is as stated in the list of responsibilities of Conference General Chair.

  The General Chair will make a special effort to locate those funding sources specifically destined to Invited Speakers (e.g. in Canada, this is the only item that conference funds from NSERC can be used for) and apply for them on time (typically if not successful in the first application, there is still time to apply the next time around if one starts early enough). As well, when preparing a budget for a sponsoring company, it is recommended to include Invited Speakers’ costs in the budget.

• Free registration: Conference Chair, PC chair and Invited speakers get free registration, but all others pay (including ALP president,  conference coordinator, and executive committee members.)

• The ALP carries insurance in the U.S. for liability for conferences for suits brought in the U.S. Conference budgets do NOT need to contain such an item.

• After the conference, once all the accounting has been completed, the conference chair must provide the ALP treasurer with a detailed breakdown of the final accounts, prepared in accordance with ALP guidelines. These guidelines are determined in consultation with the ALP’s accountant for auditing purposes, and will be provided to the conference general chair. Moreover, the conference chair must make sure that all invoices, cheques and other records of income and expenditure are kept and can be produced if required by the ALP or its accountant.