icml2008@helsinki.fi
UAI
COLT

ICML 2008 CALL FOR TUTORIAL PROPOSALS

Tutorials chair: Chris Williams

The ICML-2008 Organizing Committee invites proposals for tutorials to be held at the 25th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML-2008), on Saturday July 5 2008 in Helsinki , Finland.

We seek tutorial proposals on core techniques and areas of knowledge that enjoy broad interest within the machine learning community. We are interested in tutorials on established or emerging research topics within the field itself, but we also welcome tutorials from related research fields or application areas provided that they are of sufficient interest to the machine learning community. The ideal tutorial should attract a wide audience. It should be broad enough to provide a gentle introduction to the chosen research area, but it should also cover the most important contributions in depth. Proposals that exclusively focus on the presenters' own work or commercial presentations are not eligible.

The expected duration of a tutorial is 2.5 hours, including a 10 minute comfort break.

Tutorial participants will not be given tutorial proceedings in a hardcopy format. Instead, organizers of the tutorials will make the proceedings available on their web site prior to the conference.

How to Propose a Tutorial

Proposals should provide sufficient information to evaluate the quality and importance of the topic, the likely quality of the presentation materials, and the speakers' teaching ability. We encourage tutorials taught by two-person teams because the added perspective of a second presenter can provide richer, more balanced coverage of an area. When proposing a tutorial, please use the following boldface text as the section headings in your proposal. The proposal should be 2-3 pages long (plus possibly extra materials).

  1. Topic importance : What will the tutorial be about? Why do you believe this is an interesting and significant subject for the machine learning community at large? From which areas do you expect potential participants to come? What prior knowledge, if any, do you expect from the audience? What will the participants learn? How many participants do you expect?
  2. Content : Provide a detailed outline of the topics to be presented, including estimates for the time that will be devoted to each subject. If possible, provide samples of past tutorial slides or teaching materials. In case of multiple presenters, specify how you will distribute the work.
  3. Format : How will you present the material? Will there be multi-media parts of the presentation? Do you plan software demonstrations? Specify any extraordinary technical equipment that you would need. Will the tutorial be full-day or half-day?
  4. Publicity : How do you intend to advertise the tutorial? How will you reach the most interested and appropriate participants?
  5. Organizers & presenters' expertise : Please include the name, e-mail address, and webpage of all presenters. In addition, indicate the presenters' background and a list of publications in the tutorial area.

Tutorial proposals should be submitted via email in PDF format to ckiw (at) inf.ed.ac.uk. Soon after submission proposers should expect to receive a verification of receipt.

The timeline is as follows :

(The call is available also at http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/ckiw/icml08/ICML08CallforTuts.html )