1. Create a login account

Create a new login account on the website. If you already have one, you can use that. Please don’t create multiple accounts, and please do use your real name as your login id (e.g. “Duncan Pierce” – it’s ok to have spaces). Creating an account will require you to validate your email address – we need this to contact you and requiring a valid one helps to keep spammers out.

Your account allows you to upload a picture, a bio and a link to your website. These will be useful if your session is accepted, because the session page on the website will be linked directly to your and your co-presenters bios. You can edit your bio and other personal details at any time, and your changes will be immediately reflected on the website.

We also like to have a mobile phone contact number for you. This part of your login details is not visible to anyone other than you and the committee. This can be really useful as we make the final selections for the programme to allow us to contact presenters to see what last minute tweaks can be made to sessions to fit the overall programme together.

Your account also allows you to control whether people can contact you via a contact form on your profile (defaults to “no”) and whether you will be informed by email when session proposals and comments are posted (defaults to “yes”).

2. Join the “call for session proposals” group

In previous years we used a private wiki as a workspace to propose and discuss sessions. Accepted sessions were then (laboriously) transcribed to the main website.

In 2007 we have a new system which replaces the wiki with a private working group. The new system is somewhere between a wiki and a mailing list and is attached to the “call for session proposals” page itself. You will need to join (which is called “subscribing” in this software package) and then you can submit session proposals and see and comment on other proposals. Joining the group is also offered as a checkbox when you create a new login account. Whichever way you join, your membership of the group requires committee approval. This is the last line of defence against spammers.

Unless you have opted out of update emails in your login account, you will receive notification by email whenever a new session is posted or a comment is made. Don’t reply by email, visit the group page (links are provided in the emails you receive) and post replies there.

3. Submit session proposals

Once you have joined the group you can submit session proposals using the menu on the left-hand-side of the screen. There is no limit to the number of sessions you can propose but we urge you not to submit many more than you can prepare for or present.

The “call for session proposals” working group is private. This means that any session proposals and comments you post there can only be seen by other members of the group. If your session is accepted it will become publicly visible as part of the conference programme.

You can edit your own session proposals at any time, but you will not be able to edit anyone else’s. This means you can post a rough draft of your session and keep refining it up to the deadline. This is a good reason to post your proposal as early as you can.

Although we use a structured form (replacing the need to copy a template as we did with the old wiki) most fields don’t require an input, so you can fill them in later, while refining your session. Some fields are worth a special mention:

• Your co-presenters. Anything entered here will become a link to the profile pages of your co-presenters, including their bios. If your session is accepted, this will allow conference delegates to find out more about you and your co-presenters from your session description. As a consequence, these fields can only point to a registered user of the website, but you can leave them blank early on. We suggest you do try to fill in some bio details for yourself and get your co-presenters to do the same because it sometimes helps people evaluate your level of experience to present the session you’re proposing. When filling this field in, there is some (rather sluggish) auto-completion, based on registered user names.

• Which tracks your session might be suitable for. First, you should be aware you can search for what has been proposed for each of the tracks so far. We have to fill all of these tracks, so a proposal in a track with few other proposals stands a better chance of being accepted than one in a track with many proposals. You can propose your session in more than one track, although if accepted we will probably assign it to just one track.

• Session type. You can propose your session in more than one session format. Select any that you think apply. Sometimes your session will not fall neatly into one of the formats – in this case it’s ok to choose several. Before publishing accepted sessions we hope to link the formats you list to descriptions so delegates can find out more about your kind of session and know what to expect.

4. Review other sessions

Part of the session proposal process is peer review. That means you should read the other sessions that have been proposed and ask questions, make comments, offer to help out, etc. whenever new sessions are posted. Unless you have opted out of email notifications, you’ll receive an email whenever a new session proposal or comment is made. (Don’t reply to these emails – post your reply on the website.)

Keep an eye on your own proposals too. People will post comments and you should respond to these by clarifying your session and/or posting a comment in response.

During the proposals process we want you to give us your opinion on each of the other session proposals by using the “star” rating widget on each proposal. This will be used by the programme committee to pre-filter the proposals we receive, although it won’t be the only factor we take into account in deciding the final programme.

To avoid biasing your vote, you won’t be able to see what other people have voted unless and nor will your vote be seen by other session proposers. You will be able to change your vote at any time up to the review deadline listed on the call for session proposals.

We’ll review what votes have been cast, and sessions by people who don’t contribute to the peer review process by posting comments and voting will be much less likely to be accepted.

5. Acceptance

If your session is accepted, your proposal will become publicly visible on the website, though you will still be able to edit it to reflect evolution in your ideas about how the session will run. (In cases of abuse we may remove your editing rights.) We encourage you to keep the session description up to date with your thinking and any lessons you may learn from running it elsewhere. However, we need you to stick to your original topic – don’t turn it into a completely different session just because you can!

As part of publishing your session (and scheduling it in the programme) we may need to work with you to refine your session or its description. This is called “shepherding” and we’ll let you know if we think it’s needed. Many sessions need no shepherding.

If all goes to plan (2007 is the first year with this new system) you should be able to upload any session outputs by editing your session proposal. You may find the file attachments feature especially useful for this.