Responsibilities of and Guidance for the

CogSci Annual Meeting Conference Co-Chairs

Who you will be working with

A member of the Governing Board will be designated to serve as your primary liaison to the Board. (By default this will be the Past Chair, unless there are reasons to select someone else, e.g. one of the co-chairs being a member of the Board.) The Conference Officer handles the financial and logistical aspects of the conference, including negotiating with the venue and budgets. In addition to the Conference Officer, there is a Business Manager and a conference management company. These people handle most of the administrative side of running a conference. This frees you to focus on the scientific aspects of the conference – invited speakers and symposia, managing the process of reviewing submitted papers and posters, and so on.

Here's a list of conference chair responsibilities (this may not be exhaustive, but it's pretty close, and events occur in approximately this order):

2-3 Years Before Conference

Identify emphasis/theme for the conference, if desired. This is not necessary, if you prefer not to have an emphasis or theme. This likely has already been decided if you have made a bid to the Governing Board to become conference co-chairs.

18-24 Months Before Conference

Choose and get commitments from 3 Plenary Speakers

  • The Governing Board has a preference for big name, highly accomplished plenary speakers, but this should be understood as a preference, not a directive. The Governing Board also prefers that the conference co-chairs try to achieve some gender, discipline, and geographic diversity, if at all possible.
  • Send your intended invitations to your GB liaison for feedback.
  • There is no special invitation template. Invited Speakers get the “Full Travel Package.” This includes reimbursement of their coach-class (economy) travel expenses, reimbursement of meal expenses, up to five complimentary nights at the host hotel, and a complimentary registration.
  • Note that in addition to the 3 plenary speakers chosen and invited by the conference co-chairs, we have the longstanding tradition of the most recent Rumelhart Prize winner speaking at the conference (the winner is announced at the previous year’s conference and is explicitly required to speak at the next year’s conference) and the newer tradition of the most recent Heineken Prize winner speaking at the conference (this prize is awarded biennially, with the winners speaking at the subsequent conference that falls on an odd-numbered year). Note that in the case of the Heineken Prize there is no requirement that the prize winner has to attend and present at CogSci, but it is a priority of the Governing Board to keep that tradition going. Please coordinate with the Conference Officer on an invitation to be sent to the Heineken Prize winner as soon as possible after that winner is known.

Arrange Invited Symposium(s) – If you want

  • 1-3 invited symposia is a traditional count, with normally 3 or 4 speakers per symposium. Invited symposia normally are 90 minutes long, just like the other sessions, and will be included in one of the parallel tracks. Presenters in the chairs’ invited symposium(s) get complimentary conference registration, but no travel or lodging reimbursements.
  • Note that in addition to the invited symposium(s), there is an annual Rumelhart Symposium that is a fixed part of the CogSci conference program. The Rumelhart Symposium is organized by someone whom the winner chooses. The coordinator can be a past student, post-doc, or close collaborator of the prize winner. The speakers are also past students, post-docs, or close collaborators of the prize winner. The topical emphasis is on impacts or extensions of the prize winner's research. Coordinate with the Conference Officer on who will identify an organizer for the R Prize Symposium. The R Prize symposium is not a plenary event.

Create poster to advertise at previous year’s conference

  • If your conference is in year N, you need to have a conference poster ready for distribution at the conference in year N-1.
  • Recently co-chairs have been farming this out to friends who are artists, professional or otherwise. There is discretionary funding available to compensate a designer. If you wish to use a designer, an estimated budget should be sent to the Conference Officer for approval.
  • Please consult with the Conference Officer concerning the poster contents. There are certain things that must be there (e.g. that this is the Nth annual conference of the Cognitive Science Society).
  • Ideally, the poster design should be delivered to the Conference Officer approximately 2 months before the conference that occurs in year N-1 to ensure timely printing and delivery to the conference venue.

12 Months Before Conference

At the previous year’s conference

  • Meet with Conference Officer and GB liaison for the conferenceto review respective roles/responsibilities, timeline, and answer any questions.
  • Attend the Program Chairs’ Dinner on Friday night to hear from the current chairs about their experience and any advice/recommendations. Feel free to ask them any questions.

Recruit Organizing Committee

Here are the other roles that need filling:

  • Awards Chair: Someone to run the committee that handles the various prizes associated with the conference (i.e. the Marr Prize and the computational modeling prizes, plus any others that are subsequently endowed). Please note that reviewers will be nominating papers for awards, which generally produces a constrained set of papers to select from.
  • Member Abstracts Chair: Someone to run the group that reviews member abstracts. Member abstracts are very lightly reviewed (i.e. to make sure they are about cognitive science), and are only one paragraph long.
  • Tutorials and Workshop Chair: Reviews proposals for tutorials and workshops, and helps make sure that they run smoothly on-site.
  • Student Volunteer Chair: Coordinates student helpers who do a lot of the scout work during the conference.
  • Webmaster: Someone to set up and manage the conference web site. The Society hosts these sites, but you’ll want to have someone to do the updating for you.

Setup Conference Website and Keep It Current

  • The website requires regular updating as new information becomes available. The website is not just a source of required information, it is also the primary marketing tool for your conference.
  • The conference website is centrally hosted and the format will be standardized, but there is still a need for updating.
  • It is common for one of the conference chairs to solicit the help of an assistant, graduate student, post-doc, or department employee to do the website updating. This is one of a small set of responsibilities that the conference co-chairs don’t really want to do and they need some way to compensate the students or employees who help out. We provide a $3000 discretionary budget for the conference co-chairs to use (or not!) as they see fit. Some of this money can go to pay the webmaster for his or her time, at the discretion of the co-chairs.

November-December Before Conference

  • Setup a conference-specific email account and determine who will check it regularly. Co-chairs receive a high volume of emails, so creating a separate email account will prevent your personal email from getting out of control.
  • Recruit your Program Committee. While we have a large pool of vetted reviewers that we maintain from year to year, it is important to put some effort into extending this pool, for two reasons. First, someone’s availability can vary from year to year. Second, ensuring there is a good supply of reviewers for under-represented areas is essential for ensuring that papers across the range of disciplines get a fair hearing.
  • Release Call for Submissions via the Conference Officer. When it is ready, the Conference Officer will make the necessary arrangements for its distribution to our members and other mailing lists.

January-April Before Conference

  • Oversee submission and review process, update accept/reject letters for all submission types, make conference selections, and shepherd material through the final submission process.
  • Acceptance letters should include a link to visa information (see Conference Officer for this information)
  • The Society uses Precision Conference Solutions (PCS) as the web infrastructure for submissions and reviews. It works very well, though we improve (or at least modify) it one way or another pretty much every year.
  • Submissions due Feb 1 (or so). Reviews due mid-March. Notifications due beginning of April. Final papers due beginning of May.
  • Check-in phone call in February/March with the Conference Officer, GB liaison, and available Society chairs to discuss conference preparations and any issues that may arise.

May-June

  • Organize conference materials into the final program and proceedings. This is a considerable amount of work: Approximately 9 parallel trackswith plenary events and award addresses over three days. It is a lot of material. If you thought selecting the content was a lot of work, you won’t believe the effort required to organize it and complete the program and proceedings. You will underestimate the workload involved. Schedule your family vacation for after the conference, not during this period. Be sure to budget significant time for creation of the program and proceedings in May and June.
  • The Conference Officer and Business Manager are responsible for providing the advertisements, and “program notes” that you will need to include in the final program.
    When you’re done with the program content,the Conference Officer willoversee delivery ofthe program file for printingand delivery to the venue (if hard copies will be provided).
  • The proceedings are online and handled through PCS. Despite our efforts to work with them to streamline as much of the process as possible, there still is a lot of work here for the conference co-chairs. A good target for the completion of the proceedings and announcement that they are available online is 1 month before the conference begins.
  • Arrange for people to introduce your Invited Speakers, unless you are going to do it yourself. There is a standard ritual for introduction of the R Prize winner that includes the Society Chair, Bob Glushko, and the previous R Prize winner, so don’t worry about making any arrangements for that. Someone will need to introduce the H Prize winners on the odd calendar years.

At the Conference

  • Prepare brief (1-2 page) report for Governing Board and attend your portion of the GB meeting (Wednesday morning) so they can thank you and ask what needs to be fixed for the future. This report usually is or draws heavily from the introduction the co-chairs wrote for the program and proceedings.
  • Attend the Society Chair’s Reception on Wednesday evening. You do not have any responsibilities associated with this event, aside from attending.
  • Run the Opening Session at the Conference on Thursday morning, along with the Awards Chair (who announces the paper and travel awards)
  • Attend the Program Chairs’ Dinner on Friday night. This dinner is a casual and informal way to share your experiences and advice to the following year’s conference co-chairs.
  • If you have any of your discretionary budget left, spend a little bit on a “thank you” gathering with your Organizing Committee – usually an hour or so social at a bar or restaurant – nothing too extravagant
  • Bask in the warm glow of a job successfully completed

Please note that aside from spending (or not!) the discretionary budget however they wish, conference co-chairs are not authorized to give out comps or promise special treatment or favors to students, colleagues, friends, relatives, visiting dignitaries, etc., etc. There is now a standard practice for comps and perks so those sorts of things don’t run out of control.