LaTeX for EuroPLoP submissions

For anyone preparing their final submissions using LaTeX, Juhola Arto has these helpful instructions:

Should any LaTeX/LyX user ask, these incantations worked for me (with LyX).
The special pagenumber is in the footer, centered, also, I placed the copyright notice in the last ch.


A LaTeX preamble for EuroPlop papers (with standard "article" document class):
------------------
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc} % T1-coded fonts (=ec)
\usepackage{mathptmx} % Selects Adobe Times Roman as the default text font

% These commands will generate the special footer for the pages after the title page
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\pagestyle{fancy}
\fancyhf{} % Clears all header and footer fields
\fancyfoot[C]{F1-\thepage} % The special footer definition
\renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{0pt} % No decorative line after header regions
\renewcommand{\footrulewidth}{0pt} % No decorative line before footers


% This command generates the special footer for the title page.
\fancypagestyle{plain}{%
\fancyhf{}
\fancyfoot[C]{F1-\thepage}
\renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{0pt}
\renewcommand{\footrulewidth}{0pt}}

------------------

EuroPLoP 2009 workshop names and numbers

For anyone racing to submit their paper to for the conference proceedings, who just happens to have forgotten which workshop they were in, or what number their paper was, then... what you need is the workshops page from the conference website (click here).

Submitting submissions

Postscript to the last blog entry.

Please use the online submissions system for sending your final submissions. This is the same system we used last year and will be available at http://hillside.net/europlop/europlop2009/submission.html shortly.

In the meantime if your paper is ready please e-mail it directly to Allan Kelly, allan@allankelly.net with the copyright form.

EuroPLoP 2009 - Submissions to proceedings

The time has come to submit papers for the 2009 EuroPLoP proceedings. This year we will be placing our proceedings in the CEUR-WS online repository - see http://ftp.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/Publications/CEUR-WS/ for more details.

The deadline for submissions is Friday 22 January 2010. This deadline is a cut-off date. Failure to submit a paper by this date will be taken to mean you do not wish to have your paper included in the proceedings.

If you would like your paper included in these proceedings you will need to do three things:
1. Revise your pre-conference paper with the feedback you received in the workshop at EuroPLoP 2009.
2. Format your paper accounting to these guidelines (a PDF download).
3. Complete and return this copyright release form (PDF download) to Allan Kelly.

Only papers which were reviewed in a writers workshop are eligible for inclusion. Papers included in the writing group but not taken to a workshop are not eligible for inclusion.

In addition reports from focus groups and open space discussions are also eligible for inclusion and should follow the same guidelines and copyright release procedure.

If you have any questions please contact: Allan Kelly, EuroPLoP 2009 Programme Chair, allan@allankelly.net

Another pattern community: Ontology(ists)

I've know for a while that the Hillside/Hillside Europe pattern community - as found at PLoP, EuroPLoP and other *PLoP conferences - was not the only community of people inspired by Christopher Alexander's writing.

Well, in doing some preparation for placing the EuroPLoP 2009 proceedings in CEUR I found yet another one.

Ontology patterns: The proceedings of their 2009 conference are already in CEUR.

And they've set up their own pattern repository at Manchester University.

They seem to be aware of Hillside but they seem to be basing their work on Alexander and the Gang of Four Design Patterns book.

It seems to me, in the Hillside Patterns community, we have a lot we could teach these guys, and they probably have stuff they could teach us. I hope some of them turn up to EuroPLoP 2010.

EuroPLoP 2009 final deadline approaching

This e-mail is going to all the 2009 participants real soon now...

Dear EuroPLoP participant,

We are now starting to gather together the final post-conference revisions of the EuroPLoP 2009 papers. The cut-off date for inclusion in the conference proceedings is 31 December 2009. Papers received after this date may not be included in the proceedings.

Our intention is to place the proceedings in the CEUR online repository. There are currently no plans to produce a paper copy of the proceedings. We will however review this decision once the proceedings are online.

* What you need to do now
If you have not already updated your paper to include the comments from your workshop please do it now. You have until 31 December 2009.

* What happens next
We are currently reviewing the formatting to be used in the CEUR repository and preparing the copyright release form. When this is done I will be in contact again - hopefully within a week or two. At that point you may need to reformat your paper.

* Questions?
If you have any question please contact myself (Allan Kelly, Programme Chair 2009, allan@allankelly.net) or Michael Weiss (Conference Chair 2009, weiss@sce.carleton.ca).

Thanks

allan kelly

OOPSLA Mini PLoP

They are running a Mini PLoP at OOPSLA 2009. See http://refactory.com/OOPSLA_Mini_PLoP_Workshop.html for more details.

EuroPLoP came and went

EuroPLoP 2009 came and went without comment on this blog. Sorry about that. I'll write something soon.

Today is the end of shepherding

Today is the official end of shepherding for EuroPLoP 2009.

I will shortly contact all authors and ask them to submit the final version of their paper for the conference.

Calling all students

Early bird registration for EuroPLoP has just closed. Now we have an idea of numbers I can say its going to be the biggest EuroPLoP for several years.

Unusually, we are under subscribed for the student places. These students get approximately half their fees covered by the conference organizers.

If you are a student, and would like to come to EuroPLoP, and don't mind helping out around the conference then please get in touch. Quickly!

Last few days for early bird discount

There are only five days to register for EuroPLoP if you want the Early Bird discount. Register by Monday and it costs €990, after that it is €1090.

If you are an author, and your paper has been accepted you must register by Monday. Failure to do so will lead to rejection of your paper.

Your questions answered

Registration is now open and we're getting some questions asked. I'd like to share the answers.

Q: I have not submitted a paper to EuroPLoP, can I still attend?
A: Yes, about 20% of those attending do not have a paper at the conference. You will still be expected to read others papers and participate in helping improve their papers.

Q: Can more than one author come for one paper?
A: Yes, if a paper has more than one author they are all welcome to attend

Q: Where can I see the papers submitted?
A: Hold on, the papers are still being worked on. We will make them available to those attending the conference nearer the time of the conference. Indeed, you will have to read some of them to participate.

Q: What does the program look like?
A: Pretty similar to previous years, the preliminary program is online.

Q: How to I get to Kloster Irsee?
A: Directions from the airport.

Q: Can my partner come? Can we get a double room?
A: Yes, you will need to specify this in your registration

Q: How much does EuroPLoP cost?
A: This year it is €990 is booked before 24 May, €1090 after that date. Note also, after 24 May there number of places available will be strictly limited so if you want to come you should book now.

Q: What does the fee cover?
A: Conference fees, accommodation, food (breakfast, lunch, dinner, snakes), drinks (beer, wine, coffee, soft drinks, the lot) - I think thats everything, the key point is, apart from getting too and from Irsee everything is covered.

Q: Is it true you have games?
A: Yes, two or three times a day - and we like you to join in.

Registration is now open

The registration site for EuroPLoP is now open. Go here to register. To get the early bird rate, you must register by May 24, 2009. Note that all authors are required to register by that date.

EuroPLoP announcement mailing list

One of the unusual things about EuroPLoP is that is has no mailing list. When we want to send an announcement out we normally use the Hillside Europe mailing list and cross post to some others. But not everyone is on these lists.

The website helps but how often do people check it?
This blog helps but again, not everyone reads it.

So we have created a mailing list for sending announcements about EuroPLoP.

The list is open to all and should be low traffic - just call for papers, deadline warnings, registrations open, etc. etc.

It is a Yahoo Group and its called EuroPLoP, please join today.

What is the writing group? And why am I in it?

Most papers which are accepted to EuroPLoP are accepted in Writers Workshops. Papers which are reviewed in these workshops will be included in the conference proceedings. (I blogged about this last year, Will my paper be included in the proceedings?)

A few papers are instead accepted into the Writing Group. Indeed some authors request their papers are put into the Writing Group instead of the Writers Workshop.

Papers are directed to the Writing Group when the reviewers feel the paper is not ready for a Writers Workshop. Perhaps the paper is not clear enough, perhaps the author is new to patterns and didn’t quite “get it’ or perhaps it just needs more work.

The authors of these papers are assigned a Shepherd at the conference and another round of shepherding occurs. Since I became chair I have arranged for this to start on Wednesday afternoon and it continues through Thursday and Friday until Friday evening.

During this time the Shepherd meets with the author to discuss the paper and potential improvements. Unlike the original shepherding this occurs face-to-face at Kloster Irsee. The author then spends time editing and reworking the patterns. They meet and discuss as often as they need to – and can find time to.

On Friday evening the author submits a revised version of the patterns and there is another short review. If the patterns have improved the paper may be accepted for a Writers Workshop on the Saturday. In some cases a section of the paper is accepted but not the whole.

For a while it was common to accept just about any patterns from the Writing Group into the Saturday workshops. We stopped that a few years ago and its a very real review now and papers do get rejected.

The papers, paper sections and patterns that are accepted in the Saturday Writers Workshop will be included in the proceedings like all the others.

The Writing Group is not “second best” its just another way to improve papers, that is what EuroPLoP is all about.

EuroPLoP review deadline is this Monday

The following e-mail has been send to all authors today:

I would like to remind you that next Monday (20 April) is the EuroPLoP deadline for second paper review. Please ensure you have uploaded a revised version of your paper to the EuroPLoP website by the close of Monday.

This can be done using the original submission site with the ID and password created when you submitted your original paper.

http://hillside.net/europlop/submission/submit.cgi

Once you have submitted your paper:

1. Please **CONTINUE working with your shepherd to improve the paper**. We expect authors and shepherds to continue work until 12 June.

2. Your revised paper will be reviewed for a second time by the conference PC (programme committee). Papers will be judged for quality and progress since the first submission. Based on this review we will issue firm acceptances to the conference - or possibly rejections.

3. Acceptances (or rejections) will be issued by 8 May. If your paper is accepted for the conference at least one author will be expected to register by 24 May. Failure to register by this date will be considered to as a withdraw of paper.

We are close to finalising the budget for this years conference and expect to announce the fee soon.

If you have any questions please contact either Michael Weiss (Conference Chair, weiss@sce.carleton.ca) or myself (Allan Kelly, Programme Chair, allan@allankelly.net).

Irsee, we have a problem

We should be sending out the final shepherding notifications this weekend but we’ve hit a few technical problems. We expected to have all papers allocated to shepherd by now but we have a few papers still in search of a shepherd. (If your a shepherd, if your reading this, and you’ve not offered to shepherd a paper yet, please contact me!)

This should have been resolved this week but the Hillside mail server seems to have developed a fault – I keep getting mailed delayed messages in return.

Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, Joe Yoder looks after the server for Hillside and a quick mail to him would have fixed it. But guess what? My mails to Joe keep coming back with mail delayed.

If anyone sees Joe (or can give me his phone number!) please get in touch.

Normal service should be resumed real soon now.

Accept / Reject decisions gone

I have just sent out all the EuroPLoP accept/reject decisions. If submitted a paper to EuroPLoP and don't have an message from me then get in touch. O, if you have a co-author check to see if they got the message first.

Below is the text of the latter, the bits in [[brackets]] only went to some authors.

Onto the shepherds....
----------------------------
Acceptance to EuroPLoP 2009 shepherding

Dear XXX,

We am please to inform you that your submission to EuroPLoP 2009 has been accepted into Shepherding. As you should know this is the first of three gateways a paper needs to pass in order to be workshopped at EuroPLoP.

We are currently seeking Shepherds for all accepted papers and provided a Shepherd is interested in working with you on your paper we will put you in contact soon. It is very rare that we cannot find Shepherd for an accepted paper.

You will also been assigned a member of the Programme Committee (PC) to monitor the Shepherding process. Normally the PC member will take no active part in the process. However, if you, or the Shepherd, experiences problems you should contact the PC member in the first instance.

You are expected to submit a second review copy of your patterns by 20 April 2009. The committee will review the paper for:
- Evidence of improvement over the initial submission
- Evidence that you, as author, are open to suggestions for improvement
- Evidence of useful, original patterns in a recognisable pattern form; or, for papers submitted to the applying patterns track, evidence that the paper contributes to the body of knowledge on applying patterns

Having submitted the second review, you and your Shepherd should continue working to improve the paper.

The PC will issue final acceptances (or rejections) by 8 May. If you are accepted into the conference you, or a co-author, will be expected to register by 24 May. Failure to do so will be considered as a withdrawal of your paper.

The final conference version of your paper must be submitted by 19 June 2009.

On 8 May your paper will either be accepted into a Writers Workshop at the conference or into the Writing Group. If your paper is accepted into the Writing Group you will be expected to undertake a second round of face-to-face Shepherding at the conference. If your paper improves enough over the first three days of the conference it will be admitted to the Writers Workshop on the last day.

Only papers which have been through a Writers Workshop will be included in the conference proceedings.

[[You should be aware that at this stage that the PC reviews so far make it likely your paper will be directed to the Writing Group.]]

[[Your paper was originally submitted to the applying patterns track. However the PC feel the paper is more appropriate to the general tracks. We therefore propose to move the paper.]]

If you cannot accept these conditions you should withdraw your paper today.

For more information about the conference, Writers Workshops and the review process please see the following links:
http://hillside.net/europlop/about.html
http://www.hillside.net/shepherding.html
http://europlop.blogspot.com/2009/03/paper-reviewing-and-acceptingrejecting.html

If you have any further questions please contact Allan Kelly or Michael Weiss.

Allan Kelly, allan@allankelly.net, Programme Chair
Michael Weiss, weiss@sce.carleton.ca, Conference Chair

Paper reviewing and accepting/rejecting

We will be looking for Shepherd, and accepting and rejecting papers for EuroPLoP in the next few days so I wanted to write a few words about how we got to this point.

In the last 10 days we have been reviewing all the submissions to EuroPLoP 2009. When I say we I mean: the Conference Chair and myself, the Programme Chair, plus the conference programme committee and two specialists on the applying patterns track.

Each reviewer marked a selection of papers on a scale of 1 to 5 – 1 being strong reject and 5 being strong accept. Most reviewers looked at about 8 papers. We then looked at the average scores.

Papers below 2 were rejected immediately.

Papers above 3 we will be accepted for Shepherding.

The papers in the 2 to 3 range were more difficult. So we asked for some extra reviews. Some papers improved their score and some went down.

We have now decided to accept these papers, however, the authors will be told that there is a possibility their paper will be directed to the writing group. If they feel they cannot accept this condition they should withdraw their paper.

Acceptances and rejections will be going out soon. These are not acceptances into the conferences these are acceptances into Shepherding. During Shepherding we expect papers to improve in quality – that’s why we’re prepared to accept papers which have what might seem like low scores into the process.

In the next few days I will start allocating shepherds to the papers. During shepherding the author and shepherd work together to improve the paper. Authors need to submit a revised copy by 20 April and are expected to keep working keep on working on the paper with the shepherd.

After 20 April the we’ll review papers again and papers which are still scoring low may be rejected at this stage. Papers which score low may still have potential, these papers will be accepted into the writing group.

The writing group is an additional round of Shepherding that occurs at the conference itself. It differs from the first round because it happens face to face. Authors get two or three sessions with their Shepherd and they get time to work on their papers. If the papers are good enough by Friday evening they are accepted into the workshops on Saturday.

Shepherding, Writing Group and Workshops all aim to improve the paper. Workshops are not presentations, they are not reviews, they are directed discussions.

We’ve added one more condition to paper acceptance at EuroPLoP this year. This is a hard-nosed administration/financial decision.

Authors of accepted papers are expected to book their attendance by 24 May. Believe it or not this helps use keep the costs down.

Hillside Europe and the conference organisers (Chairs and PC) aim to keep the price of EuroPLoP low so we don’t make a profit and we try to trim and excess spending.

Once or twice in the past, papers have been accepted from authors who then don’t attend the conference. We understand when something happens, a personal emergency or such, and we try to refund their money if we can – but no guarantee. But when an author doesn’t book a place, and we hold a room for them it costs us money.

So this year we are asking authors to book early.

Submissions closed: What next?

The EuroPLoP submission deadline has passed and the system is now closed. It was unofficially open for a day or two past the deadline so one or two stragglers could make their submissions.

For the next week or two the EuroPLoP programme committee will review the submissions and most will be allocated a Shepherd. The shepherd will work with the authors for the next three months to help improve the paper.

We will be putting out a call for shepherds soon, if you want to offer your help please e-mail us.

Half way through the shepherding process the committee will review the papers again to see how they have improved. We'll issue final acceptance/rejection notices at the beginning of May.

Full schedule is on this the EuroPLoP website.

Workshop on Secure systems methodologies using patterns

Eduardo Fernandez of Florida Atlantic University, and PLoP regular, is organizing a workshop on security patterns at the end of August in Austria.

More on the website, 3rd International Workshop on Secure systems methodologies using patterns (SPattern'09).

Submission deadline is this Saturday

A gentle reminder, 3 days to submit!

Price of EuroPLoP

We've had a question about the cost of EuroPLoP 2009. The simple answer is: we don't have a budget yet so we don't have a price.

Last year the three and half days of conference, including accommodation, food and as much beer and wine (or soft drinks) you wanted was €950 - provided you booked in time to get the early-bird rate, otherwise it was €100 more.

We will certainly be aiming to have this years conference around the the same price but it will be a few weeks before we will have all the information we need to set the budget.

Submission system open: 14 days to submit

Hopefully you've all been working on your patterns for the last six months and are just waiting to submit. Well now you can!

We are pleased to announce the new and improved EuroPLoP paper submission system is open. Just go to the EuroPLoP website (http://hillside.net/europlop/) and click on the submission tab and follow the instructions.

Submissions close on February 14 - so you get the draft finished, submitted and celebrate on the day with your significant other.

If you want to submit a draft now and revise it over the next two weeks please do, the system allows you to upload revised papers.

Right, if you'll excuse me I have to get back to my own paper....