About academic event organization and community building in AI and ML | by Yuanqi Du | Mar, 2024

The precept goal of this weblog is to share some lessons, experiences, and concepts about planning an tutorial event (and developing an tutorial neighborhood). The exact scope is on events inside the AI and ML neighborhood (examples used are workshops co-located with most important conferences) nevertheless the thought extends to any event of comparable varieties and targets.

Sooner than answering recommendations on how you can prepare a fantastic event, we first should ask why communities and events (e.g. workshops) must exist the least bit?

Taking workshops at ML conferences for instance, it’s a spot to share ideas and work together in discussions inside smaller subareas. It’s not gorgeous that workshops become additional attractive to researchers as ML conferences have grown to the scale of over 10,000 attendees and have branched into many subareas as of late. Although the publication cycle in machine finding out is already fast adequate (2–3 months conference consider interval), workshop papers and shows unfold ideas even sooner and have thus become the forefront of many areas.

Okay, these events look like useful and funky, nevertheless why would we prepare them?

There are spherical 30–50 workshops in yearly of machine finding out conferences and they also unfold all through quite a few topics. Event group is often moreover referred to as neighborhood service and it takes quite a bit effort to put collectively an fascinating program. Nonetheless, it brings the organizers (1) group experiences, (2) publicity to/networking with totally different researchers inside the topic, and (3) the prospect to share visions, unfold ideas, and identify for neighborhood discussions and actions.

Now, we attain the first theme of this weblog: recommendations on how you can prepare an fascinating event?

There are a variety of key requirements to arrange a fantastic event, in my humble and personal opinion, an necessary elements are based on the options to a couple questions:

1. What’s the target of the event?
2. What’s this system to fulfill the goal?
3. Would the viewers be attracted by the mission and program of the event?

Objective. We prepare fully totally different events for barely fully totally different causes. For some events, it has a requirement for the goal; for others, it’s worthwhile to stipulate the goal. For instance, a ML conference workshop is supposed to focus on a topic that pulls the “correct” amount of viewers, (say 1–10%), not too small nor too huge. The precept thought is to supply this opportunity to work together in smaller neighborhood actions. One different occasion is a regional event (or “native meetup”) in its place of a world conference, it will possible exploit the native building throughout the realm, e.g. California may need useful entry to commerce, and New York may need easier entry to financial firms. Throughout the LoG NYC meetup, we had been considerably proud to even lengthen previous the scope of the conference as a result of the New York area has a singular environment for studying the intersection between ML and structured information akin to neighborhood science, geometric optimization, and structured probabilistic fashions.

Program. After the goal is realized, the organizers need to plot a beautiful program that fulfills the goal. About this half, I actually really feel two components are an necessary:

• Innovation is important as no one wish to attend an event with the an identical or well-known content material materials. As soon as we attend an event, we’re inquisitive about finding out about new views. Innovation can come from fully totally different aspects, it might probably be a really new or trendy topic (take into consideration the first time you see an enormous language model (LLM) or foundation model workshop), a model new perspective that people haven’t thought adequate on the topic, a revisit to earlier questions with new ideas, or it even might merely be that no one has under no circumstances organized an event for a wonderful very important topic.
• Vary is on a regular basis one indispensable part of event group. Vary can come from fully totally different views. The widespread ones embody seniority, gender, race, affiliation, and tutorial background. Vary may be very related to the inclusion of the event and anticipation of who need to attend. Take into consideration should you’re submitting a proposal to NeurIPS saying you’ll prepare a workshop with all organizers within the an identical institution, then people may marvel why don’t you merely prepare this inside your institution? Associated ideas apply to totally different selection issues. Vary brings us good vitality to debate fully totally different views and entice quite a few attendees which contributes to the event.

Smart implementation. What job does it comprise to arrange a workshop?

I’d personally break this down into two components (1) preliminary thought

• What the event might be about and who’s the viewers? Who’s going to be the co-organizers? (fully totally different events typically come from fully totally different motivations. Usually one particular person begins with some good ideas and entails additional people who share comparable ideas alongside the easiest way; usually it comes out of a dialogue;

and (2) detailed program

• What would this method embody? Usually, a one-day workshop incorporates as a minimum invited talks, spotlight talks (from submitted papers), poster intervals, panel discussions, and opening/closing remarks.
• What’s the coherent story or thought behind this method? One best topic a workshop might consider is on a regular basis the frontier of XXX with XXX being the topic akin to generative fashions, machine finding out optimization, AI for Science, and so forth. Nonetheless, this may occasionally solely comprise merely putting the entire “huge names” and customary stuff inside this method. Nonetheless does this really make a workshop attractive? Throughout the AI for Science workshop series, we consider a singular theme every time which could be an attention-grabbing dialogue and message to the neighborhood. I extraordinarily advocate event organizers spend quite a bit time on the “story” or “takeaway” of the event.
• In case you may have submissions similar to the workshops in ML conferences, it’s worthwhile to take care of submission platforms akin to Microsoft CMT or OpenReview. Usually, this doesn’t take an extreme period of time even for freshmen, they’ve excellent tutorials and the assistance employees helps nicely timed. For this half, chances are you’ll as nicely take into consideration the scale of the event, e.g. if it’s worthwhile to interrupt down into topics, with area chairs and even senior area chairs to make selections.
• You moreover should assemble and protect a nice website online to submit associated data. There are many good and simple website online templates and chances are you’ll merely host the website online on GitHub completely free.
• You might also create a social media account and Slack channel for attendees to work along with each other.
• Is it easier than you thought? That’s nearly the entire duties you’ll need to do for organizing an event. In actual fact, finally, it’s worthwhile to place collectively some slides as opening/closing remarks inside the event day!

First-time events. It takes numerous work to arrange a model new event as a result of it requires establishing each half from scratch which contains proposal templates, e mail templates, reviewer lists, and so forth. In actual fact, chances are you’ll borrow out of your mates or your favorite events.

Continued events. Of us may marvel if an event is sustained, the group load turns into quite a bit easier. Actually, chances are you’ll reuse a lot of the provides you’ll have prepared along with a proposal template, itemizing of reviewers, e mail templates, and so forth. Nonetheless, significantly in ML conferences, continued workshops aren’t given bigger priority than totally different new workshops. It will possible come from the innovation half. A continued event is good and good solely when it repeatedly produces new packages that entice people. Take into consideration when a model new workshop proposal is submitted, they often offer you new ideas (in some other case they may not do it because you’re already doing it). So, IMHO, a continued worthwhile event must on a regular basis take into consideration itself as a model new event.

Sponsorship. Fundings are an very important part of event group and may be utilized to facilitate many points: (1) journey awards (which are moreover related to selection), (2) social events (e.g. meals/drink/dinner for attendees), (3) reviewer awards (this extraordinarily depends on the events, it’s worthy, significantly for a conference that we examined with LoG, see some analysis), (4) paper awards (often it’s a certification), and additional. For those who’re considering elevating funds in your events, it’s best to start as a minimum 6 months early or rather more should you’re organizing a main time event. In our experience, we on a regular basis face difficulties with the sponsorship half: (1) who to contact — with a contact inside the institution who need to assist and push is important, (2) how quite a bit to ask — often the case it’s worthwhile to argue how quite a bit you need and the place you’ll spend them, (3) recommendations on how you can get hold of — sponsorship often can’t be made to private checking account, some potentialities embody faculty account (then you definately positively need as soon as extra anyone to help do the work) and non-profit group, (4) ship money to people — that may be very onerous, e.g. should you’re using a university account, you can’t pay any arbitrary people and it should bear an accurate course of with many paperwork and taxes.

In regards to the creator: I’m a PhD scholar with a background in CS/AI/ML. I’ve been involved inside the group of quite a lot of continued events and the establishment of latest communities, notably the AI for Science workshop series, the probabilistic machine learning workshop series, and the LoG conference. I moreover assisted inside the group of many other events in a number of roles. Further about me might be found here.