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NeurIPS 2019 Workshops FAQ

(Document updated: GMT)

Friday December 13 and Saturday December 14, 2019
Vancouver Convention Center, Vancouver CANADA
 

Where are the accepted workshops listed?

https://NeurIPS.cc/Conferences/2019/Schedule?type=Workshop

All workshops are one day long and will be held on either Friday, December 13 or Saturday, December 14. Dates for each workshop are listed at the link above.

I need a visa to come to NeurIPS.  What do I do?

Information about visas is available here.

NeurIPS will provide a full registration refund to workshop presenters who are denied a visa or who get no answer before the meeting starts. See our cancellation policy.

For Workshop Organizers

I want to edit the abstract, title or schedule for my workshop. How do I do this?

  1. Under the Calls menu on https://NeurIPS.cc, visit Workshop Application. (If you have multiple applications, you will need to select one of them.)
  2. You may change your application as often as needed during the meeting including re-ordering the organizers and updating the abstract. (You can not add new organisers though, in the same way one cannot add authors to a paper in the main conference after acceptance; this is to ensure integrity of our conflict of interest procedures.) These changes should automatically reflect in the online schedule, the Workshop PDF download, and in the mobile application with some delay once it's released. 
  3. On the first page of your workshop application where you set the Title, there is a button in the lower right that lets you edit the schedule of your workshop. Be sure to watch the amaturish Video tutorial for the schedule editor.
  4. After you edit your workshop abstracts, or schedule, you may want to verify that it looks okay in the program.  After workshop room and times have been assigned, click here (may take up to 30 seconds). The electronic workshop PDF will not generate until dates and times have been set. 

Deadlines

This year we require that notifications are sent out to submitters of contributed papers by October 1 to allow time for people to get Visas.  In order that your workshop receives its allocation of reserved registrations and complimentary tickets, you must meet this deadline. So you should work back from that date, to allow your team enough time to evaluate submissions. We suggest a deadline around September 9, which is several days after the NeurIPS paper notifications will be released.

In your initial call, you should say the workshop will be either December 13 or 14. We are currently drafting a schedule.

We also ask you to please add your final list of workshop speakers in the workshop schedule by October 1. This will allow us to make available the limited pool of reserve tickets for each workshop, so the speakers who have not yet been able to register to NeurIPS can do so.

What schedule guidelines should I follow? Are there common coffee breaks, start/end times?

Yes, all workshops need to fit within the following constraints:

Start: no earlier than 8:00am

Morning coffee/tea break to include the range: 9:45-10:30

Lunch: 1.5 hours minimum within the range 12:00-2:00

Afternoon coffee/tea break to include the range: 3:30-4:15

Finish: no later than 6:00pm

Note that the convention center is very large and coffee/tea breaks may be far from the room that your workshop is in.  For this reason, we ask that you allocate the full 45 minutes for each break.  All arrangements for coffee/tea breaks must be handled centrally; you may not provide your own catering.

I want to cater a lunch for my workshop. Who should I contact?

Sean Schneider
Catering Manager, VCC
604-647-7241
sschneider@vancouverconventioncentre.com

I want my workshop to be video recorded, how do I do this?

With permission from the organizer, NeurIPS will live stream and record all workshops in 2019 at no charge to workshop organizers. If you do not want your workshop live streamed, please contact the workshop chairs and let us know, ideally by September 9 as this may impact room assignments.  Organizers must manage the conent to record from your presenters themselves. If an individual presenter does not want to be streamed or recorded, then you must ask the camera operator not to record the session.  If a presenter wants live stream but not record or record but not live stream, then do not record the session. 

Posters: What format? How will they be put up and where?

All posters will be presented inside the room you workshop takes place in. There are no poster boards at workshops.

Posters are taped to the wall.  Posters should be on light weight paper, not laminated.  NeurIPS will provide the tape. Please ask your presenters to make their posters no larger than 36W x 48H inches or 90 x 122 cm.  That is portrait mode.

Room Layouts

Room layouts including linear feet and placement of cameras and chairs can be found here: RoomSizes

AV is provided by Freeman.  Each room will have a podium with a microphone.  Depending on the size of the room, microphones will be provided for questions and answers.  If a workshop is having a panel discussion, they need to let us know to provide a table and mics, contact <meperry@salk.edu>.  Bring your own laptop and dongles.

Some of my invited speakers need visa letters, how do I get them one?

Edit the schedule as metioned above using the button on the first page of you workshop application. It's important that you have your invited participants listed in the schedule editor using their NeurIPS.cc account email; this ensures that their visa letter of invitation is correctly annotated with their presentation in your workshop. Only paid registrants can get an invitation letter. Each workshop will be provided a limited pool of tickets to give to their presenters. Further instructions about managing tickets for workshop presenters will become available here in the FAQ later in the season. 

What happens if the meeting sells out before I confirm all my workshop presenters?

NeurIPS is holding 1200 tickets in reserve for Workshops (for presenters at the workshops).  These are just for those to have no other way to register.  The hope is that workshops will encourage people submitting to register earlier so not all speakers will need these.

Complimentary Tickets

Each workshop will receive four complimentary registrations. Some points to consider when allocating complimentary passes:

  • Only the workshop's primary contact can allocate complimentary tickets.
  • You have until one week after the meeting to allocate complimentary tickets.
  • Complimentary tickets are not subject to a sell out, even if the venue runs out of space.
  • If you give a complimentary ticket to someone that has already registered, they will receive a refund to their credit card for their existing registration fees.
  • A complimentary ticket covers Tutorials, Confrerence and Workshops.

The primary contact should visit the workshop application on the neurips website to assign complimentary passes.  Workshop Applications.

Will NeurIPS provide funding for the speakers in my workshop?

NeurIPS does not provide travel funding for workshop speakers. In the past, some workshops have sought and received funding from external sources to bring in outside speakers. Any outside funding must be handled independently of NeurIPS. 

As mentioned above, NeurIPS provides 4 complimentary tickets to the organizers of each workshop. These may be given to anyone including yourself, your students, or your presenters. Once the comps are given, any conference fees the recipient has paid are refunded. For that reason, they cannot be retracted once given. You may assign these comp tickets on the first page of your application using the button in the lower left. These tickets are not subject to the sellout; consider waiting until a few days before the conference to use them in case the reserve tickets are gone and you still need to get someone in to present at your workshop. You may apply your comps for up to 3 weeks after the meeting. 

Note: the complimentary tickets give guaranteed access to tutorials, main conference, and workshops.

I want to swap the day of my workshop, how do I do this?

Unfortunately, you cannot. The interaction complexity is too high for us to be able to cope with this.

Publicizing your workshop 

When publicizing your workshop or competition, you may mention the hashtag #NeurIPS2019

What was the selection process for the 2019 NeurIPS Workshops?

See this blog post for full details.

 

Jenn Wortman Vaughan, Marzyeh Ghassemi, Shakir Mohamed, and Bob Williamson
workshop-chairs@NeurIPS.cc
NeurIPS 2019 Workshop Co-Chairs

Technical issues with workshop submission go to lee@salk.edu