Call for Bids: ACM Multimedia 2012 and 2013

Dear All,

The ACM Special Interest Group on Multimedia is inviting for bids for holding its flagship "ACM International Conference on Multimedia".

It was decided in the SIGMM Business Meeting held during ACM MM 2009, that the conference will adopt a 3-year cycle for conference organization and in order to facilitate that, bids are invited for:

1. ACM Multimedia 2012 in Asia
2. ACM Multimedia 2013 in Europe

The conference will then revert back to one bid call per year norm i.e. bids will be called only for ACM Multimedia 2014 in ACM Multimedia 2011. Please find the details of the two required bid documents, evaluation procedure and deadlines below.

Thank you,

-Mohan Kankanhalli

(ACM SIGMM Director of Conferences)

Required Bid Documents

Two documents are required:

1. Bid Proposal: This document outlines all of the details except the budget. The proposal should contain:

   1. The organizing team: Names and brief bios of General Chairs, Program Chairs and Local Arrangements Chairs. Names and brief bios of at least one chair (out of the two) each for Workshops, Panels, Video, Brave New Ideas, Interactive Arts, Open Source Software Competition, Multimedia Grand Challenge, Tutorials, Doctoral Symposium, Preservation and Technical Demos.

      It is the responsibility of the General Chairs to obtain consent of all of the proposed team members.

      Please note that the SIGMM Executive Committee may suggest changes in the team composition for the winning bids.

   2. The Venue: the details of the proposed conference venue including the location, layout and facilities. The layout should facilitate maximum interaction between the participants. It should provide for the normal required facilities for multimedia presentations including internet access.

   3. Accommodation: the bids should indicate a range of accommodations catering for student, academic and industry attendees with easy as well as quick access to the conference venue. Indicative costs should be provided. Indicative figures for lunches/dinners and local transport costs for the location must be provided.

   4. Accessibility: the venue should be easily accessible to participants from Americas, Europe and Asia (the primary sources of attendees). Indicative cost of travel from these major destinations should be provided.

   5. Other aspects:

      1. commitments from the local government and organizations
      2. committed financial and in-kind sponsorships
      3. institutional support for local arrangement chairs
      4. conference date in October/November which does not clash with any major holidays or other major related conferences
      5. social events to be held with the conference
      6. possible venue(s) for the TPC Meeting
      7. any innovations to be brought into the conference
      8. cultural/scenic/industrial attractions

2. Tentative Budget: The entire cost of holding the conference with realistic estimated figures should be provided. This template budget sheet should be used for this purpose: http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~mohan/ACMMM_Budget_Template.xls

   Please note that the sheet is quite detailed and you may not have all of the information. Please try to fill it as much as possible. All committed sponsorships for conference organization, meals, student subsidy and awards must be highlighted.

   Please note that estimated registration costs for ACM members, non-members and students will be required for preparing the budget. Estimates of the number of attendees will also be required.

Bid Evaluation Procedure

Bids will be evaluated on the basis of:

1. Quality of the Organizing Team (both technical strengths and conference organization experience)
2. Quality of the Venue (facilities and accessibility)
3. Affordability of the Venue (travel, stay and registration) to the participants
4. Viability of the Budget: Since SIGMM fully sponsors this conference and it does not have reserves, the aim is to minimize the probability of making a loss and maximize the chances of making a small surplus.

The winning bid will be decided by the SIGMM Executive Committee by vote.

Bid Submission Procedure

Please up-load the two required documents and any other supplementary material to a web-site. The general chairs then should email the formal intent to host along with the bid documents web-site URL to the SIGMM Chair (klara@cs.uiuc.edu) and the Director of Conferences (mohan@comp.nus.edu.sg) by Sep 1, 2010.

Time-line

Please note that there is a separate conference organization procedure which kicks in for the winning bids whose details can be seen at:
http://www.acm.org/sigs/volunteer_resources/conference_manual.