Joint Steering Committee of the Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing Conference Series

NOTICE OF PERVASIVE & UBICOMP MERGER

The Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing Joint Steering Committee (JSC) has decided to hold a single conference in 2013 instead of two separate events. By offering a single venue for the leading worldwide research in Pervasive and Ubiquitous computing, we hope to better serve the needs of our research community by attracting more attendees (including the leading Pervasive/UbiComp researchers worldwide), and enabling more satellite events.

The aim is not to reduce publication opportunities but to coalesce them - the conference will be multi-track and the acceptance rate is planned to be at the higher end of previous UbiComp and Pervasive conferences (~20% or more). Topics for submissions will include any work that one would previously expect to find at either UbiComp or Pervasive. We also aim to attract attendance at the high end of previous conferences - the current record being held by UbiComp 2005 (Tokyo) with over 600 attendees.

The merged conference will be an ACM sponsored conference, co-sponsored by ACM SIGMOBILE and ACM SIGCHI (as recent UbiComps have been). The short name of this merged event will be "UbiComp" in recognition of the visionary work of Mark Weiser. The long name of the event will become "The 20XX ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing" in recognition of the dual history of the event.

The UbiComp conference series was founded in 1999 as HUC'99 and the last pre-merger conference will be the 14th, in Pittsburgh, USA in September 2012. The Pervasive conference series was founded in 2002 and the last pre-merger conference will be the 10th, in Newcastle, UK in June 2012. Pervasive and UbiComp have typically taken place over a 4-day programme, featuring technical papers and notes in the archival proceedings, specialized workshops, live demonstrations, posters, video presentations, panels, doctoral colloquia, and tutorials, and we expect the merged conference to both continue and expand on this legacy.

While we look forward to the merged event in 2013, please do make sure to also join in with our community's two exciting 2012 events:
http://pervasiveconference.org/ - Newcastle, UK, June 2012
http://ubicomp.org/ - Pittsburgh, USA, September 2012

membership of the joint steering committee:

The JSC is comprised of two of the senior (program or general) chairs from each of the five most recent Pervasive and UbiComp conferences.

(It has not yet been decided how this membership structure will change once the conferences merge in 2013). The current members are:

· James Landay, University of Washington, USA (UbiComp 2011)

· Xing Xie, Microsoft Research, China (UbiComp 2011)

· Jeffrey Hightower, Google, USA (Pervasive 2011)

· Elaine M. Huang, University of Zurich, Switzerland (Pervasive 2011)

· Jakob Bardram, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark (UbiComp 2010)

· Marc Langheinrich, Università della Svizzera Italiana, Switzerland (UbiComp 2010)

· Patrik Floreen, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, Finland (Pervasive 2010)

· Antonio Krueger, Saarland University, Germany (Pervasive 2010)

· Sunny Consolvo, Amazon, USA (UbiComp 2009)

· Hans Gellersen, Lancaster University, UK (UbiComp 2009)

· A.J. Brush, Microsoft Research, USA (Pervasive 2009)

· Hide Tokuda, Keio University, Japan (Pervasive 2009)

· Joe McCarthy, University of Washington, USA (UbiComp 2008)

· James Scott, Microsoft Research, UK (UbiComp 2008)

· Adrian Friday, Lancaster University, UK (Pervasive 2008)

· Aaron Quigley, University of St. Andrews, UK (Pervasive 2008)

· Gregory Abowd, Georgia Tech, USA (UbiComp 2007)

· Thomas Strang, University of Innsbruck and German Aerospace Center, Germany (UbiComp 2007)

· Anthony LaMarca, Intel, USA (Pervasive 2007)

· Khai Truong, University of Toronto, Canada (Pervasive 2007)

Executive Roles

Some of the steering committee members have specific responsibilities:

· Chair: James Scott (jws@microsoft.com)

· Future Conferences: Marc Langheinrich (marc.langheinrich@usi.ch)

· Awards: Jakob Bardram (bardram@itu.dk)

· Diversity and SIGCHI liaison: A.J. Brush (ajbrush@microsoft.com)

call for hosting proposals for 2013 and beyond

The Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing Joint Steering Committee (JSC) invites hosting proposals from prospective general chair(s) for the first merged conference in 2013 and for years beyond. Proposals are intended to be lightweight as possible while allowing the JSC to conduct an informed review of the bid, and need not be a "polished" document, but should include:

- Details of the city, including typical hotel costs
- Details of at least one possible venue, including an indication of the cost of hiring the venue for 1 day of workshops and 3 days of multi-track conference, and the AV facilities required, and WiFi networking capable of handling 600+ connected devices. This need not be final but are indicative of the costs of holding the conference in that location.
- Doable dates. In the past, Pervasive has been held in May/June while UbiComp has been held in September/October. Both these "windows" have pros and cons, and are open for discussion. If both are doable that is good but not necessary for a bid.
- Doable years. If multiple high-quality bids are received, the JSC will consider choosing hosts for multiple years.
- Indications of potential collocation with other events. For example, Pervasive 2012 is collocated with ISWC and DIS. The JSC actively encourages collocation as an opportunity for our community to exchange ideas with other research audiences.
- The proposed schedule of the conference, which should be based on recent UbiComps or Pervasives but should include 2-3 simultaneous paper tracks to accommodate an expected total of 12-15 paper sessions. Innovative ideas for other sessions or sub-events are very welcome.
- Short bios of the general chair(s) and any local chairs or other community members who have indicated their willingness to serve. Program Chairs for the archival papers/notes track should NOT be specified. The JSC will work with the general chairs to choose program chairs after the host is chosen.
- Potential local sponsors, both public bodies and local companies.

Prospective hosts are encouraged to review the ACM Conference Organizers Manual http://www.acm.org/sigs/volunteer_resources/conference_manual/conference_manual-toc , the ACM Conference Financial Management guide http://www.acm.org/sigs/volunteer_resources/conference_manual/3-1cfm , and the ACM sponsored conference TMRF Guidelines http://www.acm.org/sigs/volunteer_resources/conference_manual/1-2-1guide (though a TMRF is not necessary at this stage). As an ACM sponsored conference, the ACM takes on financial liability (e.g. signing contracts for the venue) and will assist the general chair(s) with negotiations with a suitable venue as necessary.

As with previous conferences, it is important to keep the registration costs and other costs associated with attending the conference as low as possible, so that attendance is open to as many as possible. Please focus on keeping costs such as food modest, and on listing low-cost accommodation possibilities.

UbiComp and Pervasive in the past have regularly moved around three regions: Asia/Pacific, Europe/Middle East/Africa (EMEA) and the Americas. There is a strong intention to continue to do this with the merged conference. However, for the first iteration of the merged event, we are soliciting bids worldwide.

Deadline for proposals: 31 December 2011.
Notification of decisions: 30 January 2012.

If you are thinking of submitting a bid, please get in touch with Marc Langheinrich, marc.langheinrich@usi.ch, or any other member of the JSC (http://ubicomp.org/sc/) The JSC is happy to help advise prospective hosts before a final proposal is submitted.

(last updated by James Scott, 2011-11-30)