Natural Social Interactions at the Hybrid Conference of the Future Call for Papers

ISMAR 2021 - Call for Competition to provide 
Natural Social Interactions at the Hybrid Conference of the Future

IEEE INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON MIXED AND AUGMENTED REALITY Bari, Italy 
October 4 to 8, 2021 
http://www.ismar21.org/

OVERVIEW
This is an open invitation to anyone interested in Augmented Reality
(AR), Mixed Reality (MR), and Virtual Reality (VR) to participate in
the ISMAR Contest. The ISMAR Contest will be held during IEEE ISMAR
2021, the premier conference for AR and MR, October 4-8, 2021.

PURPOSE

The purpose of the ISMAR Contest is to stimulate innovative and
creative solutions to facilitating the "Hybrid Conference of the
Future" in which conference attendees can synchronously engage each
other intellectually and socially in a natural manner, as if they were
co-located in the same real-world venue, despite only some being
physically present at the venue, while others attend remotely. The
theme of the contest is "Natural Social Interactions."

For this year's ISMAR Contest, we expect the following
functionalities of any solution:

	* The implemented solution facilitates natural social
	interactions among multiple remote attendees joining a
	conference from various global locations.

		* The solution must include software that ISMAR
		2021 remote attendees can download, install, and use
		to engage in the social interactions.

		* The solution software must support at least one
		of the following types of devices: desktop/laptop,
		smartphone, tablet. However, ideal solutions will
		support all three and will be cross platform (i.e.,
		Windows/MacOS/Linux for desktops and laptops,
		Android/iOS for smartphones and tablets).

	* The implemented solution preserves the natural social
	interactions among multiple attendees co-located at a
	conference in the same real-world space.

		* Contestants will be responsible for bringing the
		hardware for the co-located attendees to ISMAR 2021.

	* The implemented solution facilitates natural social
	interactions among the multiple remote attendees and the
	multiple attendees co-located at a conference in the
	real-world space.

Selected contestants will be required to provide a live demonstration
of their solutions during ISMAR 2021, October 4-8, 2021. ISMAR 2021 is
scheduled to be a hybrid conference; however, due to the current
COVID-19 pandemic, the conference may become purely
virtual. Contestants are expected to create solutions that can be
demonstrated for either modality, i.e., hybrid or purely virtual
(where all attendees are remote).

CONTEST ENTRY (Due July 19, 2021)

Teams interested in entering the ISMAR Contest should send a
high-quality video (no more than 5 minutes) demonstrating their
tentative solution, a brief description of the solution, a title for
the solution, and a list of all team members via email to
competition_chairs@ismar21.org by July 19, 2021. The Contest Chairs
will review the contest entries and will notify teams whether their
entries have been selected or not by July 26, 2021.

ABSTRACT SUBMISSION (Due August 6, 2021) Teams selected for the
competition must submit an abstract (2 pages) that describes their
solution and its innovations. This abstract must adhere to the ISMAR
2021 Conference Proceedings format:
https://ismar21.org/call-for-papers/. Acceptable abstracts will be
published in the conference proceedings of IEEE ISMAR 2021 and will be
included in the IEEE Xplore digital library.

COMPETITION (October 4-8, 2021)

Teams selected for the competition will demonstrate their solutions
live at IEEE ISMAR 2021. If ISMAR 2021 is held as a hybrid conference,
teams can choose to either demonstrate their solutions at ISMAR 2021
in Bari, Italy or remotely. If ISMAR 2021 is held as a purely virtual
conference, all teams will demonstrate their solutions remotely.

A panel of judges with no conflicts of interest will be chosen to
judge the demonstrations and solutions. Additionally, IEEE ISMAR 2021
attendees will have the ability to vote for their favorite
demonstrations and solutions. The Contest Chairs will use the feedback
of the judges and the attendee votes to decide Grand Prize and
Honorable Mention solutions.

PRIZES

The team with the Grand Prize solution will receive a $1500 reward and
will be invited to submit an IEEE Transactions on Visualizations and
Computer Graphics (TVCG) journal paper, which will be included in the
IEEE ISMAR 2022 Journal Proceedings. In addition to describing the
solution, this TVCG journal paper must also include a formal
evaluation of the solution, which can be conducted after the 2021
Competition. The submission will undergo the same reviewing rigor as
all other journal submissions.

The team with the Honorable Mention solution will receive a $500
reward for their solution.

CONTEST CHAIRS
Ferran Argelaguet, INRIA Rennes, France
Ryan P. McMahan, University of Central Florida, USA Voicu Popescu,
Purdue University, USA

CONTACT
You can contact us at competition_chairs@ismar21.org if you have any questions. 

Call updates will be posted on the ISMAR Competition web page 
https://ismar21.org/competition