Working Group Members

This page is for working group leaders, members, and potential members.

For more information, contact the working groups coordinator: Michael Goldweber ( mikeyg@cs.xu.edu )

A note of encouragement from the working group coordinator for anyone consider working group participation:

I have been involved with ITiCSE working groups virtually every year since their inception in 1996, as either a working group participant, leader, and now as the working group coordinator. Needless, to say I remain very excited about the working group experience. As the afidavit on the primary working group page attests to, it is a very rewarding experience. The friendships and professional connections the working group experience has afforded me are invaluable.

For me, participating in a working group is an intellectual luxury. My vision of being in the academy, prior to attending graduate school, contained long passionate discussions with my colleagues over intellectual topics of mutual interest. I have learned that the reality of being a faculty member is much different from my lofty visions. Papers need grading, assignments need creating, lectures need writing, and committee meetings need attending. Being involved in a working group is the closest I have ever come to realizing my vision of what it meant to be an academic.

I accept that some might view working on some topic for two months in an independent fashion followed by five long intense days in collaboration with colleagues from various corners of the world as an experience to be missed. I loved it. Without distraction I got to spend five days in debate (sometimes heated) and discussion with colleagues who not only shared an expertise in the area, but more important a passion for it as well. The discussions were not time bounded as most meetings I attend, even the ones whose topics please me, are. Some discussions began early in the morning, continued over lunch --provided to all working group members for the five days they are at the conference site-- and persisted well into the early evening.

For me it has been an intellectual luxury to "lose" myself in a topic for which I had expertise in along with ten other expert colleagues from around the world for a five day period (including a two month preparation period). It might be one for you too.

Working Group Participant Information

Each working group leader(s), in consultation with the working group coordinator, is responsible for selecting the members of their working group. Anyone interested in participating in a working group should follow the instructions below. Each group should aim for six to ten members, including leaders. Justification may need to be given for going outside these bounds. In particular, groups can be canceled for having too few members.

Each working group leader is expected to organize her working group prior to the conference and have significant work completed prior to the first day on site. This may include a web site for presentation of the group's work and findings. Eventually the working group web site can become a virtual meeting place of people interested in the topic. You can and should establish a mailing list for your members and perhaps an interactive web site (wiki).

The workikng group leader is also responsible for the draft due on the last day of the conference and the final report due one month later. This report, if accepted for publication, will be published in a SIGCSE Bulletin and in the ACM Digital Library. It will also be put on the web on various ITiCSE-related pages.

Working Group Participant Expectations

Working group topics and their leaders were selected from among the proposals submitted to the working group coordinator by the conference paper call date. To apply to participate in a working group please send a letter to the leader(s) of the working group you wish to join, cc'ing the working group coordinator, by (April 18, 2003. Your letter should include:

• Name and contact information.
• Why you are interested in participating in the particular working group.
• What specific expertise in the area you bring to the working group. This should include background and prior contributions to the topic of the group.
• If possible, a short bibliography of your prior work in the area.
  
  

Working group members, under the direction of their group leader(s) will work intensively for the two months prior to the conference date. The importance of making effective use of this time cannot be understated. The intention of the working group experience is NOT to produce a meaningful report in five days. The goal is for working groups to work intensively --in a distributed though collaborative fashion-- for two months prior to meeting in person at the immediately prior to the conference. The final five days spent at the conference site is meant to be the conclusion of this process.

All working group members are expected to arrive at the conference site three days (June 27th) prior to the conference. For five days, June 28-July 2, working groups are expected to work in a collaborative fashion to conclude both their research and report writing. The final three days of this period overlap with the conference. You, as a working group member, should feel free to attend talks and other conference activities, though be prepared to spend most of your time on working group activities. All working group members are expected to stay at the conference site until the end of the conference to fulfill your responsibilities to your working group.

Working groups are not expected to work in a vacuum. Each working group is expected to receive input and feedback from other conference delegates on their work. To facilitate this, one conference session is reserved for the working groups; Tuesday July 1 from 10:45-12:15.

While there is no expectation that each working group member bring a laptop, the more laptops a working group has, the better. Each working group will be supplied with 1-2 PC's, a printer, and access to a photocopier. While the conference site has numerous public labs, having multiple laptops in each working group facilitates the parallel writing that characterizes much of the working group activities during the conference.

At the conclusion of the conference, each working group is expected to submit to the working group coordinator a mature draft of their report.

A final version of each working group report must be submitted to the working group coordinator by August 4, 2003. This draft will be subject to a multiple blind review process. Feedback from this review will be cycled back, hopefully by August 18, to the working group leaders. Leaders, in collaboration with their working group members, will have an additional two weeks to make any revisions they deem necessary after receiving the reviewer data. Finally, all working group reports, in their final form must be submitted to the working group coordinator by September 1, 2003. At this point a final publish, do not publish decision will be made.