Birds of a Feather

What is a bof?

Birds of a Feather (BoF) are non-commercial and focus on community building through interactive presentations and discussions covering a wide variety of topics.

Successful BoF submissions will often involve any combination of presentations, audience discussion, roadmap discussions, question and answer periods, and community meet ups. Before submitting, consider whether your proposed session fits this description. Consider also whether there is another group of people who are likely to submit a similar BoF and whether you should merge your proposal with theirs.

Upon review of your BoF proposal, the BoF committee may suggest combining it with other proposals.

BoFs are not the appropriate venue for:

Preparing Your Submission

A BoF submission includes:

Topics include but are not limited to:

If none of the topic areas fit, please select “Other” on the submission form. Please select “Community Meetings” for society or SC meetings and TOP500.

Session Format

While we do not prescribe how a BoF should be organized, BoFs should have a format that ensures high levels of audience interaction. Talks and presentations should be oriented toward provoking community discussion, rather than being purely informational. Prepared presentations should be no more than 50% of the time used. Discussion and interaction should be at 50% of the time used. An example of a useful presentation in this sense is a roadmap update to open feedback on how to orient future efforts in an open-source software project.

A proposal must be submitted for all BoFs. Even if your BoF has been held at a previous SC conference, you must submit a new proposal to be reviewed and evaluated against the other submissions.

Selected BoF proposals are ranked in terms of their potential for community building, relevance to the expected audience, expected level of audience participation, and the timeliness of the topic. Other criteria may be considered as well. BoFs are expected to limit the inclusion of vendor-specific content.

conflict of interest

Please be aware of, and adhere to, these SC Conference guidelines regarding potential conflicts of interest and disclosure.

A potential conflict of interest occurs when a person is involved in making a decision that:

• Could result in that person, a close associate of that person, or that person’s company or institution receiving significant financial gain, such as a contract or grant, or
• Could result in that person, or a close associate of that person, receiving significant professional recognition, such as an award or the selection of a paper, work, exhibit, or other type of submitted presentation.

Program Committee members will be given the opportunity to list potential conflicts of interest during each program’s review process. Program Committee chairs and area chairs will make every effort to avoid assignments that have a potential COI.

According to the SC conference you have a conflict of interest with the following:

• Your PhD advisors, post-doctoral advisors, PhD students, and post-doctoral advisees;
• Family relations by blood or marriage, or equivalent (e.g., a partner);
• People with whom you collaborated in the past five years. Collaborators include: co-authors on an accepted/rejected/pending research paper; co-PIs on an accepted/pending grant; those who fund your research; researchers whom you fund; or researchers with whom you are actively collaborating;
• Close personal friends or others with whom you believe a conflict of interest exists;
• People who were employed by, or a student at, your primary institution(s) in the past five years, or people who are active candidates for employment at your primary institution(s).

Note that “service” collaborations, such as writing a DOE, NSF, or DARPA report, or serving on a program committee, or serving on the editorial board of a journal, do not inherently create a COI.

Other situations can create COIs, and you should contact the Technical Program Chairs for questions or clarification on any of these issues.

Plagiarism

Please review the IEEE guidelines on identifying plagiarism.

registration

All BoF speakers, moderators, and session leaders must register for the conference and pay for either a Technical Program or Exhibits Only registration. These registration types include access to all BoF sessions, Tuesday–Thursday.

BoF speakers, moderators, and session leaders do not receive honoraria or discounted admission to any conference sessions. By submitting a BoF proposal to SC, you are making a commitment to attend the conference and pay a registration fee upon acceptance of your submission.

Workshop and Tutorial registrations do not include Birds of a Feather access. See more information at Registration.

finalizing accepted BoFs

Upon acceptance of your BoF, the session leader must submit an updated abstract and biographical information for each session leader to the SC submissions website before September 15, 2024 to be included in the online SC Schedule.

Archives

BoF materials (i.e., title, abstract, presenter information) are made available in the Technical Program Archives upon submission of final BoF information to the SC submissions website before September 15, 2024.

schedule and location

BoFs are generally held in parallel tracks at approximately the following times:

• Tuesday, November 19, 12:15–1:15 pm and 5:15–6:45 pm
• Wednesday, November 20, 12:15–1:15 pm and 5:15–6:45 pm
• Thursday, November 21, 12:15–1:15 pm

Your BoF should be scheduled within this timeframe. If you have a potential scheduling conflict please let us know as early as possible. We will try to accommodate you, but we will not be able to accommodate all requests.

infrastructure

BoFs are assigned either a classroom or a theater room equipped with standard AV facilities:

• Projector
• Microphone and podium
• Wireless lapel microphone or wireless handheld microphone
• Projection screen

Current SC Conference policies and procedures do not include the following in your BoF room:

• Poster boards
• Round tables
• Wired Ethernet connection
• Power strips on the tables or under the chairs
• Recording of the BoF

We do not anticipate being able to accommodate any requests for additional equipment or reconfiguration of the provided equipment and furniture.