Call for Workshop Proposals

Workshop Chairs: Bohyung Han, Caroline Pantofaru, Torsten Sattler
Proposal Deadline: October 16th, 2020 [11:59 p.m. Pacific Standard Time]
Notification: December 4th, 2020
Notification: December 11th, 2020


Contact: workshops-cvpr2021@googlegroups.com

 

  

We are soliciting proposals for workshops to be held together with the 2021 Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference (CVPR 2021). The workshops will take place on June 19, 20, and 25 at the same venue as the main conference. The purpose of the workshops is to provide a comprehensive forum on topics that will not be fully explored during the main conference and to encourage in-depth discussion of technical, application, and community issues. We also strongly encourage workshops aiming to create and strengthen communities. To this end, it will be possible to submit proposals for affinity workshops (such as Women in Computer Vision or Good Citizens of CVPR) that will be judged separately. The CVPR 2021 organizers will collect workshop registrations, provide facilities, and distribute electronic copies of the workshop proceedings.

In the past few years, the number of workshop proposals has been increasing rapidly. Due to space and time limitations, as well as to encourage diversity of topic coverage, we will only be able to retain a limited number of high-quality proposals. Therefore, we encourage the workshop organizers to submit proposals that are specific and detailed in justifying relevance and viability. In the case of very similar workshop proposals, we might ask the organizers to merge into a single workshop.

Important information:

  • In the event that CVPR 2021 is held virtually due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, workshops will be held virtually as well. Workshop proposals need to detail two options: one for how they will be held if partially virtual, and a second for how they will be held if fully virtual.
  • Proposals will be submitted via CMT3 (https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/CVPRW2021). Organizers will be asked to fill out a questionnaire during the submission process. Answering the questions (see below for details) and adding all organizers to the submission is all that needs to be done. There is the option to upload the full proposal in PDF format, which may include additional information, e.g., details on the datasets used for a challenge. However, filling out the submission form is the most important part of a submission.
  • The workshop submission deadline is Friday, October 16th, 2020 [11:59pm Pacific Standard Time]
  • When preparing a proposal, please note that CVPR 2020 author notification is on Feb 23, 2021.
  • When preparing a proposal, please note that the camera-ready deadline for workshop papers is on Apr 20, 2021.

For questions, please contact the workshop chairs via workshops-cvpr2021@googlegroups.com.

EVALUATION CRITERIA

Workshop proposals will be evaluated based on the following criteria. Their order below does not reflect their importance.

  1. Excitement and Relevance
    • How well a workshop complements the main conference
    • The community’s interest in the topic
    • How the workshop will generate new discussion or momentum on the topic
    • The relevance of the invited speakers to the topic
    • We encourage workshop proposals aimed at creating or improving community
    • We encourage interdisciplinary workshops
  2. We encourage, and expect, diversity in the organizing team and speakers
    • This includes diversity in the organization teams and invited speakers (e.g., gender, race, affiliations, seniority, etc.), and diversity of opinions within a workshop.
    • Proposals should specify how diversity is being addressed. The CVPR 2021 Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Chairs are available via cvpr2021_dei@googlegroups.com to help if needed.
  3. Diversity of topics and formats
    • We will strive for a diversity of topics. Workshops with overlapping topics might be asked to merge. While merging is optional, at most one of the workshops proposed to be merged will be accepted.
    • We strive for different workshop formats, such as invited speakers, challenges, community building, etc.
    • The complementary nature of invited speakers with respect to other workshops. This will also be used as a criterion to identify similar workshops.
  4. Organization
    • Experience of the organizing team and dedication of the main organizers
    • Method for having an engaging workshop either in-person or (partially) remotely

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS

During the submission process, organizers will be asked to provide the following information. In addition, an abstract (2000 characters) needs to be submitted. Note that there is a character limit for each point.

In your responses, consider and address the evaluation criteria above.

1. TOPIC

  • Workshop title
  • Workshop acronym
  • Topics that will be covered: Describe the topics that will be covered in the workshop.
  • Broader impact statement: Describe why the workshop is relevant to the community and how relevant the topics or discussion are beyond the CVPR audience.
  • Ethical considerations around the topic (if any)
  • Relationship to previous workshops: Describe how this proposal relates to previous workshops held at CVPR/ICCV/ECCV/etc. in the last three years.

2. ORGANIZERS AND SPEAKERS

  • Point of contact: The name and email address of exactly one individual who will be the contact point responsible for the workshop and all communication. The workshop chairs will only communicate with a single point of contact for each workshop.
  • List of organizers: Please make sure that all organizers are listed as authors of the workshop proposal submission in CMT3.
  • Organizing team’s experience and background: Information that supports the organizers’ ability to run a workshop, and appropriateness to a workshop on this topic. Include brief bios for the main organizers.
  • List of invited speakers: Please list only speakers that have confirmed or tentatively confirmed their attendance, and who are willing to deliver a virtual talk if necessary. We recommend finding invited speakers who will not give the same talk at multiple workshops. Otherwise, the workshops may be asked to merge. For each speaker, please indicate if confirmation is tentative or final. For each speaker, provide a link to their website and explain their relevance to the workshop.
  • Specify how diversity is being addressed.

3. FORMAT AND LOGISTICS

  • Contingency plans: Given the on-going COVID-19 pandemic, workshops may be in-person, have mixed in-person and virtual attendance, or be fully virtual. This decision will be made by the CVPR 2021 organizers as needed. Organizers should be prepared to run the workshop in any of the three modes. Describe your format for each case. In particular, describe how you will support virtual attendance if the workshop is partially virtual and how the workshop program will change if the workshop is fully virtual.
  • Preference for a half-day or full-day event. Half-day events are encouraged.
  • Expected workshop size:
    • Small (< 100 attendees)
    • Medium (100-300 attendees)
    • Large (>300 attendees)
  • Nature of the workshop: Please indicate which of the following options describe the main components of your event
    • Invited speakers
    • Peer-reviewed papers (orals / posters)
    • Competition
    • Discussion/panels
    • Affinity workshop focused on community building
    • Other (please briefly describe)
  • Schedule: Provide a preliminary schedule for your workshop.
  • Provide a short justification of why a full-day event is necessary, if applicable.
  • If including paper submissions
    • Tentative program committee
    • Paper review timeline
    • Will these papers be published in proceedings? Note that paper submissions must adhere to the CVPR 2021 paper submission style, format, and length restrictions.
  • If the workshop hosts a competition, describe it
    • Explain which datasets will be used
    • Whether the datasets are already available or not (in the latter, provide an estimate when the datasets will be available and describe your contingency plan in case of delays)
    • Ethical considerations for the datasets
    • How submissions will be evaluated
    • The timeline for the competition (start, submission deadline, decisions to participants).
    • The supplementary pdf can be used to provide additional details.
  • If posters are included, how many are expected?
  • Special space or equipment requests, if any.

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTION

Proposals should be submitted via CMT (https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/CVPRW2021) by October 16th, 2020 [11:59pm Pacific Standard Time]. Proposals failing to comply with the guidelines will be desk rejected. There will be an option to upload the full proposal in PDF format containing additional details, e.g., on the datasets used for a challenge. However, submitting this PDF is not required. The main submission procedure consists of filling out a form (see above).

 

Additional information on workshop organization:

  • After acceptance, workshops will be required to prepare their own websites, separate from the CVPR 2021 webpage. These pages will include workshop details, organizers, dates, submission instructions, and, once finalized, the workshop program.
  • Accepted workshops must provide their program material using a conference-specified format Google Sheet for producing program/app information.

 

QUESTIONS?

For questions, please contact the workshop chairs via workshops-cvpr2021@googlegroups.com.

Due to the large number of proposals, the announcement of accepted proposals will be delayed until Dec 11th, 2020.  Note that we had a large number of workshops with significant overlap in scope. We will be contacting workshop organizers to consider merging proposals.