Please Note: These guidelines are under development and have not been endorsed by the PAKDD Steering Committee.

Conference Length

Three and a half days is a good length. The first day is for workshops and tutorials. The second day is the openning of the main conference with reception in the evening. The third day is the half day, with a organised tourist event for the afternoon, followed by the conference dinnner. The final day is a full day.

Programming

Finish the conference with an invited panel session. Often something like learnings from the conference and where to now. The aim is to bring everyone together for the end of the conference for a wrap up, and to encourage attendees to remain until the end to avoid the slump in attendance for the final few sessions. It also provides a definite end point, rather than simply fading out!

Final Programme

A serious problem is the no-show. Authors have paid their registration to get their paper published, but don'`t turn up - they've already got what they wanted or else last minute changes of plans have required them not to travel!

The main problem here is attendees turning up to a session where only 2 of the 5 presenters have arrived. It looks bad and provides a negative talking point.

A simple solution is to delay production of the final progamme as much as possible. Before final printing get confirmation from each author that they can still attend and remove from the programme those who can not.

Session Chairs

Avoid having as a session chair one of the authors of a paper in the session. It tends to make it awkward for the chair to also present a paper.