ISMB/ECCB 2007

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**Call for Special Interest Groups (SIGs) Now Closed**

Call for Proposals: Special Interest Groups

ISMB/ECCB 2007 will be preceded by two days of Special Interest Group (SIGs) meetings, on Thursday and Friday, July 19-20, 2007. This call is an invitation for scientists and professionals working in bioinformatics and computational biology to submit proposals to organize SIG meetings.

What is a SIG meeting?
A SIG meeting is a one- or two-day meeting about a specialized area that is of interest to ISMB/ECCB attendees and is held in conjunction with ISMB/ECCB. It should provide a broad and/or deep perspective on the cutting edge of a field of research; in particular, it should not focus primarily on the organizers’ work. It may or may not cover a topic that is also addressed in the main conference—if it does, it should cover the topic more extensively than the conference does.

Follow these links to see examples of previous SIG meetings:
ISMB 2006
ISMB 2005
ISMB/ECCB 2004
ISMB 2003

We currently plan to hold four two-day SIGs and four one-day SIGs, but this may change depending on the submitted proposals. Participants will register for a primary SIG but will be free to circulate between parallel sessions.

Responsibilities of SIG organizers and ISMB

SIG organizers are responsible for the scientific content of the SIG meeting. They may invite speakers, publish a call for submissions, or a combination. They are expected to operate within the context of ISMB procedures, including finalizing the program and providing materials by the deadlines, working within the budget, etc.

Delegates to all SIG meetings will receive handouts from all SIG meetings, to facilitate movement between sessions. The handouts may be on a CD, in printed form, or both; this will be decided later, in part depending on the preferences of SIG organizers. Of course, a CD can include more material than printed handouts, and in particular might contain speaker slides and other reference materials.

Organizers will collect and prepare handout materials. They are responsible for ensuring that the material that they submit may be legally used and that appropriate copyright permissions have been arranged. Speakers are expected to grant permission to ISMB/ECCB to copy and distribute these materials, including making them available for sale.

SIG organizers may host and maintain a SIG website.

ISMB will handle the logistics of holding the SIG meeting in conjunction with ISMB/ECCB 2007 and will take the financial risk for holding the meeting. This includes managing registration, promoting the meeting, preparing delegate handouts from the provided materials, providing a room and audio-visual services (Internet access, projector & screen, microphones, etc.), and supplying food.

Please review the ISCB/SIG Relationship document for more detailed information.

How to apply
Please include the following sections in your proposal, in the indicated order. The entire proposal should be no more than four pages long.

Title (up to 20 words, and preferably something to pique one’s interest)

Topic: Describe the field to be covered by the SIG meeting and its relevance for ISMB/ECCB participants (about one page)

Meeting details:

1. Duration (1 or 2 days)
2. Expected sessions / topics, if possible with an explanatory paragraph about each
3. Draft of the time schedule
4. How presentations will be selected (invitation, call for submissions, etc.)
5. Possible speakers (This is not required, but may add weight to the proposal—indicate speakers who have already agreed to participate.)
6. Previous meetings of this SIG or similar SIGs, with attendance statistics
7. List of special requests not covered in the ISCB/SIG Relationship document referenced above, noting if any request is essential to conducting the SIG (ISCB will try to be accommodating but cannot guarantee to supply specially-requested items)
8. Potential sources of sponsorship for the meeting

Information about each organizer: full name (including title), affiliation, e-mail and postal addresses, telephone numbers (work and cell, if available, including country and city codes), fax number, URL of home page, qualification to organize this meeting

Proposals should be saved in Word (.doc) or Acrobat (.pdf) format. Name the file using the family name of the first organizer (i.e., John Doe’s proposal should be in a file named doe.doc or doe.pdf).

Proposals should be submitted by e-mail to sigs07@ismbconf.org by Friday, December 15, 2006.

Proposal evaluation
Proposals will be evaluated by a committee, which will consider the following criteria:

1. Relevance and interest of the proposed program to ISMB/ECCB attendees
2. Relevant expertise and experience of the organizers
3. Effectiveness of the proposed SIG meeting organization
4. Clarity and quality of the proposal

Contact information
If you have any questions about the SIG meeting proposal process, please send e-mail to sigs07@ismbconf.org.

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