Author Guidelines: Lightning Talks

Date Due Friday, October 18, 2019
Time Due 23:59 AoE (Baker Island, UTC-12h)
Submission Limits 1 page, 500 words max. (including abstract of 250 words)
Duration 5 minutes
Submission Link SIGCSE 2020 EasyChair
Notification to Authors Friday, November 15, 2019
Camera-Ready Deadline Wednesday, December 11, 2019

What is a Lightning Talk?

Lightning Talks describe works in progress, new and untested ideas, or opportunities for collaborative work. The purpose of a Lightning Talk can be to start a discussion, find collaborators, or receive input and critique about an idea. Proposals are limited to 500 words, including the abstract of 250 words, and will be blind reviewed for acceptance. Lightning Talk presentations will be a maximum of 5 minutes each. Presenters may use slides, but these must be submitted to the Lightning Talks chair a few days before the presentation.

Proposals will undergo blind review.

How Should The Proposal Be Formatted?

Lightning Talk proposals must be submitted in PDF format. The full proposal contains an abstract and a description of your Lightning Talk (as detailed below). The full proposal is used for the review process only. If the proposal is accepted, the title and authors appear in the printed program and the title, authors, and abstract appear in the online program and proceedings.

Lightning Talk Proposal Format and Contents (limited to 1 page, 500 words max.)

  • Title: A title for the Lightning Talk.

  • Abstract: A summary of the Lightning Talk. The same abstract will also need to be submitted via a text box on the submission page. Please be sure that your summary is accurate and that both submitted copies (here in the Lightning Talk Proposal, and in the submission text box) are identical.

  • Description: Describe your talk in more detail. It will be helpful for reviewers to know why you are excited about the topic, and why you think others will be interested too. Outline how you plan to present your topic in 5 minutes. Lightning talks are expected to explore tentative or preliminary work, or even ideas for possible work. Presentations of mature work will not be considered.

Lightning Talk Abstract

The abstract is the summary of the Lightning talk that will appear on the conference web pages. The summary is limited to, and must match verbatim, the abstract section of the Lightning Talk proposal. The Lightning Talk abstract must be submitted in plain text. Note that the abstracts of accepted Lightning Talks can be edited in response to reviews.

Supplementary Materials

The abstract for an accepted proposal may contain a link to a website with more information. However note that if you choose to include supplementary materials in your initial submission, you are obligated to blind the material, e.g., removing author names, using anonymous content hosting services such as Dropbox, as to respect the blind review process. Furthermore, reviewers are not obligated to read your supplementary materials, so please ensure that your abstract is still self-contained and sufficient.

Sample Proposal

2018 Lightning Talks

How Do I Submit My Proposal?

Write your submission using the format specified above.

Please limit the number of topic choices to no more than 5. This will help match your submission with reviewers.

Convert your submission-ready paper into Adobe PDF format. Refer to our Creating Adobe PDF Documents page page for assistance.

A PDF version of your submission should be uploaded using the online submission system - EasyChair.

Please do not wait until the last minute to submit your documents because that is when everyone else will be connecting to our server!

Make note of the proposal ID number and password assigned to your submission. You will receive an e-mail message confirmation. Spam filters sometimes trap these automatically generated messages so you may need to check your spam trap for the confirmation and later, acceptance or rejection notification.

After receiving confirmation, go to the submission site to review your submission for accuracy. Send e-mail to the chair(s) (see below) if there are any problems.

By SIGCSE policy, at least one contributor is required to register, attend and present a lightning talk. See our full policy for more information.

Questions

If you have questions about anything discussed above, please contact the Demos and Lightning Talks Team.