Invitation to Host ACM Multimedia Asia 2022 Conference

MM Asia Steering Committee

http://www.acmmmasia.org/

The ACM Multimedia Asia (MM Asia) Steering Committee invites prospective parties to submit proposals to host and organize the third and fourth ACM Multimedia Asia conference in 2022.

MM Asia is a newly established international conference to showcase the scientific achievements and industrial innovations in the multimedia field. Its mission is to illuminate the state of the art in multimedia computing by bringing together researchers and practitioners in this field. It is essential to ensure that the conference includes sessions for presenting high-quality research papers and for sharing practitioner experience. The first ACM Multimedia Asia conference was successfully organized in 16-18 December, 2019, Beijing, China (http://www.acmmmasia.org/). The second conference will be held at Singapore in December 2020.

Proposal for MM Asia 2022. Parties interested in hosting MM Asia 2022 are invited to submit their proposals (20 pages or less) by Sunday, May 31, 2020 (PDT time) by email with the subject line of “Proposal of Hosting MM Asia 2022” to the Steering Committee Co-Chairs, Tao Mei (tmei [AT] live.com) and Changsheng Xu (csxu [AT] nlpr.ia.ac.cn).

• May 31, 2020: proposal due (this is to leave two years for preparation)
• June 1 – July 1, 2020: steering committee pre-selection
• July 1, 2020: proposal pre-selection notification
• Oct 2020: bidding presentations at ACM MM 2020 (if more than one team is pre-selected)
• Dec 2020: presentation of organizing committee at ACM MM Asia 2020 (Singapore)

Guidelines.

The MM Asia steering committee will evaluate all bids using the guidelines set out below. Anyone interested in bidding is welcome to make informal contact with the steering committee chair prior to the deadline for the proposals. Proposals will be judged on the strength of the organizing committee (track records in multimedia computing, diversity and experience of international members), the plan for the conference (vision, novel ideas, etc.), and location (appeal, accessibility, etc.). Decisions will be made by majority vote within the steering committee. Only one proposal from all the submissions will be selected by the steering committee.

The steering committee will aim to review proposals and make its decision within 4~6 weeks of the submission. MM Asia should facilitate interactions between broad multimedia community members which includes both researchers and practitioners.

The host organization is expected to arrange for refereeing of all submitted papers to international standards, using ACM Multimedia's existing international program committees as their primary source of referees, and to liase with ACM over the publication of conference proceedings.

Timing and Location.

The targeted submission deadline would be middle of July (after the notification of ACM Multimedia, to attract submissions with good quality from ACM Multimedia), and opening date would be December or January.

As China has the largest multimedia community in Asia, we propose to rotate the locations in a 3-year window, one or twice in China (including Taiwan and Hong Kong), and the others in other Asian countries (including Australia) in the very beginning stage. We may change the rotation policy once the conference goes well in all the Asian countries including Australia.

The conference location should be easily accessible by people from around the world, with good air, rail and road links. The bid should include a short description of the locality and any remarkable or outstanding features that would make it particularly attractive to potential delegates. The venue of the conference should preferably be in an education/research institute or a hotel, with space for at least 200 delegates.

Accommodation and Social Events.

Proposers should demonstrate that they have suitable accommodation for delegates (e.g. en-suite rooms in student halls and/or local hotels), for a meeting of around three days duration. The availability of low-cost accommodation for student delegates such as youth hostels or inexpensive student halls would also be an advantage. The Organizer is expected to organize a drink reception (possibly externally sponsored) and a relatively formal conference dinner. Other types of activities such as sightseeing visits would also be appreciated.

Conference Website.

Proposers are expected to organize and maintain a web site (typically www.acmmmasia2020.org) for the conference, at least providing links for paper submission, delegate registration, organizing, program, and steering committees.

Budget Plan.

The ACM SIGMM has agreed to sponsor MM Asia. Proposers must produce a budget for the conference. Costs should be estimated based on 200 attendees, inclusive of organizers and volunteer helpers. It is expected that the conference should break even at a minimum, and should preferably show a small surplus. Various projections of income and expenditure, with different price bands for members of any collaborating or sponsoring bodies (normally a 10% discount on the standard rate), non-members and student delegates, with corresponding break-even points, should be provided.

Registration fees for students should be kept as low as possible in order to encourage young researchers to participate. Incentives for early registration are advisable.

Checklist.

The proposal should include the following information, and in 20 pages or less in PDF:

• name, affiliation, and email contact information of main organizers.
• a copy of the first call for papers for the conference including dates and organizing team.
• highlights of the conference and justification/support of the conference dates, location, and venue.
• a draft of the organizing and program committees (please specify the conference organizing experiences of the key members and if a member is tentative).
• actions in support of diversity and inclusion. The team should consider adding a committee member for your conference who looks after diversity and inclusion and if you do so, then that person can apply for further SIGMM funds to support diversity and inclusion, at MM Asia 2020.  That could be lunch for female or first-time attendees, support for childcare, or sign language interpretation, etc. See http://sigmm.org/news/sigmm_funding_initiatives_2020 for example.
• conference accessibility. The team should have one dedicated OC member responsible for this.
• a draft programme for the conference.
• a draft of the conference budget including the ACM contingency fee and the VAT if applicable. Please note that SIGMM will sponsor US$100 for every early conference registration as a SIGMM member.
• a schedule of activities.
• plans for publicizing the conference.
• new ideas or initiatives of the proposal.

 
Tao Mei and Changsheng Xu
Co-Chairs, ACM MM Asia Steering Committee
March 2020