There is a clear need to promote application-focused work in the VIS community. This is due both to the recognized need to engage real-world decision makers and to the growing awareness of the value of application work for generating basic research questions. The new format of Application Spotlights is one of several components - including the VAST Challenge, the SciVis Contest and the VisInPractice program - which aim at bridging the gap between fundamental research and practical applications.
What is an Application Spotlight?
We envision an Application Spotlight as a fast-paced, session-sized event (90mins) that revolves around a central, practically relevant topic. It is meant to be lean, in the sense that both the application for and the organization of a spotlight should be as lightweight as possible to entice participation from both within and outside of the classical VIS community. A Spotlight Session will offer organizers quite some leeway in setting up the program. A typical layout would include a primer talk that introduces the basics of the application domain and/or gives an overview over existing solutions. This is followed by several coordinated presentations on the topic of interest. Overall, a Spotlights will fill a 90 minute session. Organizers should reserve ample room for open discussion.
Organizing an Application Spotlight
Those interested in organizing a spotlight should submit a proposal by creating a submission in PCS. The committee will review and evaluate those proposals. Organizers will select the topics to be addressed, recruit speakers for those topics, decide with each speaker on the title of his/her presentation, and provide other information as needed. Moreover, depending on the topic at hand, organizers may choose to publish part of the resulting material. Potential publication venues include VIS-related IEEE journals and electronic publication through IEEE xplore. It is, however, the responsibility of the Spotlight Organizers - not the IEEE VIS (Spotlight) Chairs - to create a journal-level publication opportunity. In contrast, organizers may decide not to publish at all and use the Spotlight as a means to present new content relevant to both an application domain and the VIS community and foster a lively discussion around their selected topic.
Preparation of the Proposal
The Application Spotlight Organizers should provide the following information:
- Title: Describe the subject of your spotlight session as accurately and specifically as possible in not more than ten words.
- Summary: Describe your spotlight in no more than 1500 characters, including spaces. The summary should be written to attract those who work on your specific topic area as well as those who work in related areas. Based on experience, we suggest the following outline: Explain the problem area to be addressed by the speakers and why it is important in significant applications. Explain in as much detail as possible the basic research questions in visualization and analytics that are likely to be triggered by the application. Discuss any methodological advances that are helpful in the application domain and its potential contributions to basic research.
- List of organizers
The PDF of your proposal should be submitted via PCS.
Important Dates
Proposals due: April 15, 2019
Acceptance notification: May 6, 2019
Chairs
Alex Endert, Georgia Tech
Bernd Hentschel, d.velop AG
Kristi Potter, NREL
For questions regarding Application Spotlights, please email: spotlights@ieeevis.org