Computational Intelligence - February 2014 - 12

today's social media and technical presentation advances so as to find new hybrid
forms that can provide enhanced presenter and participant experience. The
key to improvement from today's solutions is interaction, in my eyes.
The IEEE MCE is already involved
in consideration of a number of social
media alternatives. The IEEE CIS Conference Committee will work closely
with IEEE MCE, identifying realistic
alternatives for our conferences and
working with our General Chairs to
find new and exciting solutions for our
future conferences.
Our larger conferences can be somewhat daunting to our newer researchers
in the field and even for our more experienced researchers, finding all the relevant talks and events that you might
want to attend is far from easy. The conference committee will look into how
social media may be applied during a
conference so as to interact with delegates, supporting their awareness of talks,
debates, competitions or social events of
interest to them personally.
A further investigation for the conference committee will be to find ways
to support our members that are unable
to travel to a particular event, enabling
some form of virtual conferencing. Particularly our PhD students have often
limited funding and thus a limited possibility to travel to events. It is important
to find ways to support our next generation of researchers through such virtual
means, as well as ensuring that the benefit that they obtain from each single
travel to an event is maximized.
The changes envisioned, are not new
in the sense that the IEEE CIS Conference Committee has been discussing
some of these ideas already in 2013 and
various proposers have come up with
interesting alternatives to the more traditional presentation forms. However, it
is now time to work to make a new
technical era within conference organization a reality. The introduction of such
changes needs thorough investigation
into alternatives, not only within the
IEEE CIS Conference Committee but
also together with our current General
Chairs so as to identify suitable alterna-

tives that may meet our goals. It is to be
expected that much of 2014 and even
part of 2015 will go to investigation of
potential changes.
Networking

For all our sponsored conferences, a key
focus after technical quality, has to be to
ensure that networking is in focus.
There is currently much support at our
sponsored conferences for both supporting networking for woman through
the work of the Woman in Computational Intelligence subcommittee and
also for younger researchers through the
work of the Student Activities subCommittee and for recent graduates
through the GOLD Sub-committee
(more information available from the
IEEE CIS Members Committee website: http://cis.ieee.org/members-activities-committee.html). In addition to
activities organized at our conferences
through these committees, it is important that the conference schedule and
social activities are focussed towards
increasing networking possibilities.
Younger Researchers

Much efforts are already in place in our
conferences to support research students
and such efforts will continue to be
encouraged and supported. However,
conferences may also play a role in
attracting younger potential researchers
to our field and supporting our education of such researchers. One way to
reach out to this group of bachelor and
masters students is by competitions
directed and limited to these groups.
The IEEE CIS Conference Committee
will look at ways in which the conferences could fulfill such a role.
Industry

One area where our main IEEE Conferences are surprisingly weak is support
for industry uptake of our techniques. It
is important that we address this issue
and work with the appropriate Task
Forces from the IEEE CIS Technical
Committees to find ways in which conferences can support outreach to industry. One potential solution is to turn to
competitions where participants may be

IEEE ComputatIonal IntEllIgEnCE magazInE | FEbruary 2014

encouraged to solve real world applications of computational intelligence i.e.,
real daily challenges that industry is facing. Such competitions will enable us to
showcase real industrial results and
industrial support for such competitions
should be sought. The conference committee will address this possibility as well
as potentially identifying other ways in
which conferences can provide a venue
for both showcasing relevant industrial
results and encouraging industry uptake
of our techniques.
New Sponsored and Technically
Sponsored Conferences

Despite a strong portfolio of sponsored
and technically co-sponsored conferences, the Conference Committee is still
interested in extending the existing
portfolio. Events already technically cosponsored, are encouraged to apply for
full sponsorship and other events are
encouraged to apply for technical cosponsorship, preferably as a first step
before full sponsorship. Details on how
to apply for sponsorship can be found at
http://ieee-cis-org/conferences/ieee_
support/ and applications may be mailed
to the VP Conferences. Further, any
additional help required may be sought
by contacting VP Conferences. An alternative is to apply for inclusion in the
IEEE SSCI event by contacting either
the VP Conferences or the SSCI General Chair directly.
Sponsored Conference Bids

The IEEE CIS are always looking for
enthusiastic experienced as well as less
experienced conference organizers for its
larger and smaller conferences, respectively. We have a fantastic team of volunteers but are always looking for new volunteers to extend our team. The IEEE
CIS Conference Committee actively
solicits proposals for our sponsored conferences and also welcomes non-solicited
proposals. A change that will be put in
place in 2014 will be that conferences
once open for bids for the next event,
will be announced on our website:
http://cis.ieee.org/conferences.html.

(continued on page 18)

http://cis.ieee.org/members-activi http://ieee-cis-org/conferences/ieee_ http://cis.ieee.org/conferences.html

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Computational Intelligence - February 2014