Connectionists: Call for site proposals ICML 2017

[Andrew McCallum]

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      INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON MACHINE LEARNING (ICML) 2017
		       CALL FOR SITE PROPOSALS
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In the summer of 2017, the 34th International Conference on Machine
Learning (ICML-2017) will be held.  We invite groups interested in
hosting the conference to submit a letter of intent by March 31, 2015,
and a complete proposal by May 31, 2015.

Proposals from the Asia-Pacific region are particularly encouraged; however, 
proposals from elsewhere will also be given serious consideration.  Past and 
future ICML locations and plans are:
2014: Beijing, China
2015: Lille, France
2016: New York, USA
2017: Asia-Pacific encouraged
2018: Europe, coordinated with Federated AI Conference
2019: USA, co-located with CVPR


Proposals should address the following issues:

1. Proposed Dates.  The conference should be scheduled for five-six
days (two-three days reserved for workshops and tutorials; three days
for paper sessions, poster sessions, and invited talks).  The
conference prefers dates in the range from June 15 to July 15, but
other dates will be considered, particularly if they permit
co-location with other related conferences.

2. Locale Parameters.

   - Cost issues.  Historically ICML conferences have tried to keep
   attendance costs low, to encourage attendence from students and
   newcomers to the field.  Thus the proposal should address the
   accessibility of the location---i.e., if is it easy and inexpensive
   for people (especially graduate students) to travel to the
   conference site.  (To answer this question, please compute mean
   airfares from Europe, North America, and Asia, and discuss visa
   issues if relevant.)  The proposal should also discuss whether
   meals and lodging available conveniently at reasonable cost.  (To
   answer this question, please estimate costs for meals and lodging,
   and discuss the proximity to the conference site of eating places.)

   - Meeting Rooms, AV Equiment, etc.  What are the physical
   facilities like?  Consider rooms for plenary sessions, parallel
   sessions, workshops, tutorials, and poster sessions.  Is there
   visible space for sponsors and publishers who want to set up
   displays?  What are the charges, if any, for using the various
   rooms/locations?

   - Internet Access.  Is wired or wireless internet access
   available?  At what cost?

   - Other features.  You may mention any other aspects of the site
   or the region that are relevant.

3. Local Machine Learning Community.  Is there a local ML
group/community that can help with organization and funding?

4. Opportunities to co-locate with other conferences.  In the past, we
have co-located with COLT, UAI, and KDD.  There is strong interest in
co-locating with these conferences and also with other related
conferences including ISMB (Intelligent Systems in Molecular Biology),
EMNLP (Empirical Methoers in Natural Language Processing), CoNLL
(Conference on Natural Language Learning), IUI (Intelligent User
Interfaces), and CVPR (Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition).

5. Organizational and Institutional Support.  Is there a conference
office that can help with local arrangements?

6. Budgetary Issues.  In order to compare competing proposals, every
proposal will be asked to complete a spreadsheet that discusses
budgetary aspects and capacities.  Blank sample budget and checklist are
http://www.cs.umass.edu/~mccallum/imls/Sample-Bid-Checklist.xlsx
http://www.cs.umass.edu/~mccallum/imls/Sample-Bid-Expenses-Budget.xlsx
Some issues that must be addressed are: Is any financial support available
from the hosting institution and/or local industry?  What is a rough
estimate of the expected conference registration fees (including a
student rate, and the rate for workshops only, if applicable?)

Letters of intent need contain nothing other than a non-binding
statement of intent and a list of likely principals, and should be
emailed by March 31 2015 with Subject line "ICML 2017 Site Proposal" to:

 Andrew McCallum
 President, International Machine Learning Society (IMLS)
 mccallum at cs.umass.edu


General questions about proposing a site should also be addressed to
Andrew McCallum.  Proposals (in PDF) should be emailed to the same
address by May 31, 2015, accompanied by a spreadsheet for budgetary
information.  Note that IMLS will provide a spreadsheet format for
budget predictions (so that we can more easily compare competing 
proposals.)

The IMLS governing board will rank proposals according to cost and
accessibility, proposed dates, opportunities for co-location,
attractiveness of the location, and experience of the host group.

Note that IMLS chooses the Program Chair and General Chair as a
decision separate from the choice of the site.  The site proposal
should propose a Local Arrangements Chair and other relevant
supporting positions (e.g., Volunteers Coordinator, Registration
Chair, etc.).