Organisers: the hosting institution(s), location of the conference, general chairs and local organisers, program chairs.
Prospective conference dates: typically in early June. Try to stay well clear of the ADHO DH 2018 conference (24-30 June) to avoid scheduling conflicts for organisers, authors and participants.
Schedule of important dates: publishing Call for Papers, abstract submission deadline, notification date.
Optional aspects: ideas for finding sponsors, PR plans, and social events.
What organizational effort is expected:
- Size and duration: the last two years, DH BeNeLux was held over two days, attended by around 150 participants and received around 100 abstract submissions, from both within and outside the BeNeLux region, and mostly in the category of oral presentations. We do not expect these numbers to drop significantly, but it can go up depending on PR and timing of deadlines, so plan for enough capacity. Keep in mind to have capacity for all participants during plenary sessions (e.g. opening, keynotes, closing).
- Program committee: the program chairs organise the paper submission and reviewing process, which includes setting up a submission system (we have successfully used EasyChair for 4 years now), inviting reviewers and accepting and rejecting submissions.
- Conference format and abstract submissions: DH BeNeLux aims to provide a high-quality conference with a low threshold for DH researchers to participate and discuss their work. It offers authors to submit abstracts for at least oral presentations, posters and demos. Oral presentations are meant for significant work and require abstracts to contain enough information to judge its contribution (typically around 1000 words). Preliminary work and project presentations are more suitable for presentation via posters and can be described in shorter abstract (up to 500 words). We encourage participants to present research tools and projects via demos (abstracts up to 500 words). Organisers can also invite abstracts for panel discussions.
- Website and publicity: the general website for DH BeNeLux is http://www.dhbenelux.org/ (WordPress). Hosting organisers are responsible for setting up a web page or site for the 2018 edition. This can be a separate page on the general website, or a redirect from the general website to a separately hosted site. The general and program chairs are also for publicity regarding the conference, which includes the calls for papers, submission deadlines, calls for participation.
- Budget and registration fees: each edition is responsible for their own operational budget (including sponsors) and conference registration. Typically, participants can register separately for attending the conference and the conference dinner.
- Co-located workshops: organisers are free to program for co-located workshops, either by organising their own workshops or via a call for workshop proposal.