A Proposal for Hosting
International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR)’s
International Conference on Pattern Recognition
December 8-11, 2008
Tampa, Florida, USA
Submitted
On behalf of the
IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on
Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence
(A Member Society of IAPR)
Technical Sponsor
And
University of South Florida
Conference Host
By
Masakazu Ejiri (Japan), Rangachar Kasturi (USA) and Gabriella Sanniti di Baja (Italy)
General Chairs
Contact Information
Professor Rangachar Kasturi
Computer Science and Engineering
University of South Florida
Tampa, Florida, 33620, USA
International Conference on Pattern Recognition
December 8-11, 2008
Tampa, Florida, USA
Introduction
The proposed IAPR’s International Conference on Pattern Recognition in 2008 (ICPR-2008) will be hosted in Tampa, Florida by the University of South Florida (USF) with technical support from the IEEE Computer Society’s Technical Committee on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (PAMI TC) which is the US member of IAPR. The overarching principle that has governed this proposal is that ICPR 2008 shall be an IAPR organized conference with participation from leading researchers from a large number of IAPR member societies
Hyperlinks embedded in this document provide more detailed information about the items presented in this summary proposal. Many of these documents are also distributed to the Governing Board (GB) members on a CD for off-line viewing. For additional information or clarification on any of the items discussed here, the readers are encouraged to contact the general chairs.
Conference Venue
The City of Tampa (Mayor’s Letter) with a metropolitan area population of about three million is located on the western shores of the State of Florida on a bay of the Gulf of Mexico (Tampa Presentation). It has easy access through its international airport, well connected road network, and even a large cruise port visited by several international cruise lines. Tampa International Airport offers some 550 daily scheduled flights from/to 58 domestic destinations and 44 weekly scheduled international flights from/to seven international markets including London. Frequent direct flights to other US international airports such as Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York and Washington make it easy to reach Tampa. Orlando, which is just 100 Kilometers away, provides additional direct international connections. World renowned beaches of Clearwater and Saint Petersburg are parts of the Tampa Bay area. Many hotels provide daily ground transportation to attractions in the Orlando area such as Disney World, Universal Studios, Sea World, and Kennedy Space Flight Center.
The conference venue is the Tampa Convention Center which can handle conventions as large as 5,000 people (Convention Center Presentation). Tampa Convention Center is located directly on the waterfront in the heart of downtown Tampa and includes 60,000 Square Meters of meeting space and 600 Meters of waterfront views. The Center recently completed an expansion project that doubled its number of breakout rooms to 36. The additional meeting rooms complement the Center's 20,000 Square Meters of exhibit hall, and a 3,600 Square Meters ballroom. All meeting rooms are located in close proximity to one another. The Center is conveniently located within walking distance to hotels, restaurants, the cruise terminal and other attractions.
Conference Dates
The proposed dates for the conference are December 8 to 11, 2008. Many factors such as conflicts with other major conferences (e.g., CVPR in US), weather, major holidays, university schedules, and hotel and airfares have been taken into account to arrive at these dates. It is entirely possible, however, if the GB so chooses, to organize the conference at other dates (we have obtained bids from convention center for two alternate dates: August 18-21 and October 13-16). In all cases, the main conference runs from Monday through Thursday with tutorials and workshops organized before and after the main conference.
Conference Tracks
We anticipate that the conference will feature five parallel theme tracks. Each theme track will address an area of interest to the pattern recognition community. The conference themes would cover all topics of interest to our community. While traditional tracks such as pattern recognition, computer vision, and image and signal analysis are likely to remain as track themes in 2008, rapid growth of our field with applications in many fascinating research areas warrants careful consideration of theme topics for tracks at a later date. For this reason we prefer not to name the tracks at this point but simply identify potential researchers to chair such themes and emerging research areas.
Expected Number of Submissions and Accepted Papers
Recent increases in the number of papers submitted to recent ICPRs clearly indicate that our scientific community is growing rapidly. ICPR 2008 is expected to receive 1,600 to 2,000 submissions which, with a tentative acceptance range of 55 to 65%, would lead to some 1,100 accepted papers. The tentative schedule provided in this proposal includes 360 oral presentations in 75 oral sessions organized as 5 parallel presentation tracks and 740 posters in 7 sessions. Clearly, there are many other possible scenarios for distributing accepted papers into sessions and the optimal schedule will be determined by the program chairs after paper selection process is completed. Same number of proceedings pages is allocated to both oral and poster papers. Besides regular presentations, the technical program will feature four invited plenary speakers (including the K.S. Fu lecture), one per day, and several invited long papers distributed in the afternoon sessions. Suggestions from the track chairs and technical committee chairs would be considered by the program chairs in the selection of invited speakers.
Tutorials and Workshops
Tutorials and workshops will be organized to run before and after the main conference under the direction of respective chairs. These will be organized as per established IAPR practices. These will be self supporting operations from a budgetary point of view but all logistics support will be provided by the conference organizers.
Demos, Exhibits and Contests
We would like to encourage demos, exhibits, and contests during the conference. We emphasize our interest in these events by including chairs for these tasks in the conference organization.
Conference Format
Table below summarizes the tentative schedule for ICPR 2008. The GB-meeting will take place on Tuesday afternoon, possibly partially overlapping with conference sessions. In this event, Program Chairs will try to avoid involvement of potential attendees to the GB-meeting in paper presentation and session chairing.
Tentative Schedule for ICPR 2008
SUNDAY, 7 December 2008All day / Tutorials
Afternoon / Registration
Evening / Welcome Reception
MONDAY, 8 December 2008
All day / Registration
Morning / Opening Ceremony (Plenary),9.00-9.30
KSFu Prize Lecture (Plenary), 9.30-10.30
Coffee-break, 10.30-11.00
Parallel Oral Sessions (5), 11.00-13.00
Lunch Break / 13.00-14.00
Afternoon / Parallel Oral Sessions (5), 14.00-15.30
Afternoon Poster Session, 14:00-16:00
Coffee-break, 15.30-16.00
Parallel Oral Sessions (5), 16.00-17:30
Evening / TC-Meetings, Standing Committee Meetings
TUESDAY to THURSDAY, 9 to 11 December 2008
Morning / Parallel Oral Sessions (5), 8:30–10:00
Morning Poster Session, 8:30-10:30
Coffee-break, 10:00-10.30
Invited Talk (Plenary), 10:30-11:30
Parallel Oral Sessions (5), 11.30-13.00
Lunch Break / 13.00-14.00
Afternoon / Parallel Oral Sessions (5), 14:00-15.30
Afternoon Poster Session, 14:00-16:00
Coffee-break, 15.30-16.00
Parallel Oral Sessions (5), 16.00-18.00
Rooms & Events for ICPR 2008
Event / Room(s)Plenary Sessions / Ballroom A-B
Poster Sessions / West Hall
Demos & Exhibits / West Hall
Presentation Track 1 / Meeting Rooms 15-25
Presentation Track 2 / Meeting Rooms 15-25
Presentation Track 3 / Meeting Rooms 15-25
Presentation Track 4 / Meeting Rooms 15-25
Presentation Track 5 / Meeting Rooms 15-25
Conference Reception / To be determined
Banquet Dinner / Ballroom A-C
Committee Meetings / Various breakout rooms
Proceedings
The proposed budget includes an electronic copy of proceedings for each attendee. The proceedings will be distributed/published through IEEE Computer Society or a similar large publisher who can provide wide spread dissemination of its content through digital/on-line libraries. We have obtained quotes from IEEE Computer Society for CD production. If there is substantial interest by GB, we will explore costs of print proceedings either for bulk distribution or for a print on demand basis. Metadata of its content will be made available in a searchable form on IAPR web site.
Conference Organization
The conference will be organized by an international team of volunteers under the guidance of an advisory committee comprising senior leaders of IAPR. Whenever possible, we have identified a member from each of the three geographical regions for all key committees: Europe, North America, and Rest of the World. All those listed below (in alphabetical order) have accepted our invitation to participate. A few others have not responded yet and, if they accept, we will include their names in the final list which will be presented at the GB meeting.
Advisory Committee
J.K. Aggarwal (USA), H. Bunke (CH), Z. Chen (Taiwan), D. Duttamajumder (India), H. Freeman (USA), I. Gurevich (Russia), K. Ikeuchi (Japan), J. Kittler (UK), T. Pavlidis (USA), A. Sanfeliu (Spain), C. Suen (Canada), M. Takagi (Japan)
General Chairs
M. Ejiri (Japan), R. Kasturi (USA), G. Sanniti di Baja (Italy)
Program Chairs
R.P.W. Duin (The Netherlands), D. Laurendeau (Canada), B. Lovell (Australia)
Publicity and Sponsorship Chairs
A. Campilho (Portugal), T. Matsuyama (Japan), G. Medioni (USA)
Finance Chairs
J. Bigun (Sweden), S. Tanimoto (USA)
Demos, Exhibits and Contests Chairs
L. Heutte (France), H. Ip (Hong Kong), D. Leandro Borges (Brazil)
Workshops Chairs
T. Caelli (Canada), Y. Ohta (Japan), M. Pietikäinen (Finland)
Tutorials Chairs
S. Ablameyko (Belarus), M. Shah (USA)
Publications Chairs
G. Borgefors (Sweden), P. Flynn (USA)
Local Arrangements Chair
Laura Ellenburg (USA), D. Goldgof (USA)
Theme/Area Chairs and their Areas of Expertise
Europe:
Hans Burkhardt, Germany (IP, PR, CV)
Luigi P. Cordella, Italy (PR&NN, IP, Biomedical appl.)
Erkki Oja, Finland (Statistical PR, NN, Machine Learning)
Thierry Pun, CH (IP, Medical imaging, Multimedia applications)
Vaclav Skala, Czeck Republic (CV: graphics and vizualisation)
Max Viergever, The Netherlands (Biomedical applications)
NorthAmerica:
Pierre Boulanger, Canada (Cognitive Approaches and AI, Biomedical and other Applications)
Sven Dickinson, Canada (CV, Cognitive Approaches and AI)
Joydeep Ghosh, USA (PR&NN)
Tin Kam Ho, USA (PR&NN, IP and Signal Proc., Biomedical and other Applications)
Marc Pollefeys, USA (CV)
Rest of the World:
Freddy Bruckstein, Israel (CV, PR, IP)
Georgy Gimelfarb, New Zealand (PR&NN, CV, Cognitive Approaches and AI)
Kenichi Kanatani, Japan (PR&NN)
SeongWhan Lee, Korea (PR&NN, Biomedical and other Applications)
Hsi-Jian Lee, Taiwan (PR&NN, IP)
Technical Program Committees
The program committee for each theme track will be composed of well-known experts in the field. They will be invited to join the committee by track chairs in consultation with program chairs. GB members and TC chairs will be invited to suggest well known researchers to serve in this role. We anticipate broad international participation in these committees.
Schedule
The following schedule of action items is planned for the organization of ICPR 2008.
Date / ActivityICPR 2004 / Obtain Approval for ICPR 2008 Proposal, 1st Meeting of Conference Committee
2005 / 2nd Meeting of Conference Committee at a Convenient Conference
ICPR 2006 / 3rd Meeting of Conference Committee / 1st Call for Papers / Begin Publicity
March 2007 / 2nd Call for Papers / International Publicity, Seek Sponsorship
Nov. 2007 / Last Call for Papers / Closing Date for Tutorials/Workshops Proposals
April 2008 / Closing Date for Paper Submissions / Selection of Tutorials
July 2008 / Notification of Paper Acceptance / Arrangements for Demos & Exhibitors
Aug. 2008 / Camera Ready Papers / Early Registration / Preliminary Program
Dec. 2008 / ICPR 2008
Budget
The proposed conference fee of $500 (early registration, member rate) and $300 (early registration, student rate) includes admission to sessions, coffee breaks, electronic proceedings, welcome reception, and banquet. Late and on-site registrations will be charged an additional 15% and 30% respectively. These fees are set with a break even attendance of 1,000 (700 member and 300 student registrations). There are no taxes similar to VAT in USA. Since this will be an IAPR conference without any financial involvement by IEEE CS, there will be no other fees. The hosting organization, the University of South Florida, will provide necessary support through its Conferences and Institutes office. IAPR return of 10% on gross income is included. Net income from registrations in excess of break even level on preregistration deadline would be distributed through travel stipends for attendees with financial need. We will work with the IAPR ExCo to identify such candidates.
Financing ICPR 2008
Budget Item - Income / US DollarsRegistration (700 x $500+300 x $300) / 440,000
Sponsorship / 10,000
TOTAL INCOME / 450,000
Budget Item – Expenditures / US Dollars
Convention Center Rental (Convention Center Presentation) / 30,000
Coffee Breaks (Food and Beverage Proposal) / 48,000
Welcome Reception / 42,000
Banquet + Entertainment / 60,000
Publications and Publicity / 50,000
Registration Services / 30,000
Invited Speakers including KSFu Prize Lecture / 30,000
Audio-Visual + Communications / 30,000
Conference Software, Conference Planning Meetings / 30,000
Conference Secretariat / 30,000
Contingency (including insurance) / 25,000
IAPR Return (10% of Gross Revenue) / 45,000
TOTAL EXPENDITURE / $450,000
Conference Hotels
Several hotels in close proximity to the convention center have quoted special block rates for conference attendees as shown in Table 1. While the rates shown in this table are for 2004, the hotels have guaranteed that the rates will not increase by more than 3% per year between now and 2008. Copies of the quotes are available at Ashley Plaza, Comfort Inn, Hyatt, Marriott, Radisson, Wyndham for your information Many other hotels offering rooms at all price ranges are readily available in Tampa. There are some 19,000 hotel rooms in Tampa with 1,800 within walking distance of the convention center.
Airfares
As noted earlier, Tampa is within easy reach of many international destinations. To obtain an estimate of the prices of air ticket, we searched on the Travelocity (http://www.travelocity.com) web site for travel from various cities of IAPR member societies to Tampa in December 2004. A summary of these prices are shown in Table 2.
Table 1 Room Blocks and Rates