ConfShare: A Unified Conference Calendar for
Researchers
Tetsuji TAKADA
National Institute of Advanced
Industrial Science and Technology

2-41-6, Aomi, Koto-ku, Tokyo,
130-0064, JAPANzetaka @ computer . org

Hideaki KANAIJapan Advanced Institute ofScience and Technology
1-1, Asahidai, Nomi, Ishikawa,
923-1292, JAPANhideaki @ acm . org

ABSTRACT

We propose a web-based academic conference information
sharing system that is named “ConfShare”. There are some
web services for sharing academic conference information.
Researchers are not familiar with the services well. Weconsider that a major reason is a user interface. A primaryuser interface for retrieving a conference information insuch systems is a keyword search. It is difficult for
researchers to find and get conference information stored in
the systems. We develop a novel user interface that users
can browse and retrieve conference informationinteractively. The information in an academic conference
consists of some attribute information such as a location, anacronym name, submission deadline and notification dates
and so on. ConfShare enables users to browse theirinformation and use them for an interactive filtering ofconference information. The user interface makes it
possible to find and get a conference even if a user hasvague demands.

Takuichi NISHIMURAITRI, AIST and CREST, JST1-1-1, Umezono, Tsukuba,Ibaraki, 305-8568, JAPANtaku @ ni . aist . go . jp

therefore, design another user interface that is able to satisfy
such user’s needs. The ConfShare, though a contributor
manually posts some typical attribute information of aconference, enables users to browse their information
separately and interactively. The GUI enables users to findand get conference information even if they have vague
requirements.

Author Keywords

Information sharing, Conference calendar, User interface.
ACM Classification Keywords

H5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI):
Miscellaneous. H.5.3. Group and Organization Interfaces.

Figure 1. A snapshot of the ConfShareINTRODUCTION

We develop a web-based information system for sharing
academic conference information for researchers. The nameof the system is “ConfShare”(fig.1). The goal of this projectis to achieve a better way to find and get an academic
conference information. The system enables researchers toaggregate academic conference information. And
researchers can access to the information through a webbrowser.
There are some similar web services for the same purpose.
However, from a result of our preliminary user studies,
these systems do not provide researchers with a suitableuser interface for users who have no search keywords. We,Copyright is held by the author/owner.
CSCW`08, November 8—12, 2008, San Diego, California, USAISSUES FOR GETTING A CONFERENCE INFORMATION

There are some issues in current schemes for finding andgetting an academic conference information. A conference
information has been disseminated through mailing lists
and conference web pages. However, both dissemination
methods have some issues about user notification andconference information delivery. At first, we consider abouta mailing list. It is not easy for researchers to findappropriate mailing lists. Even if researchers subscribe awell-known mailing list of conference information likedbworld[1], they receive tons of e-mails from the mailinglist. Moreover, it is difficult for researchers to findappropriate conference information from them. And receipt

timing and a content of notification do not always matchwith subscriber’s needs.
On the other hand, a conference web page is open to thepublic. It is, however, impossible for researchers to accessthe web page in case they do not know the URLinformation. The issue of conference web pages is that how
to inform a URL of them to researchers. Since URLs ofmany conference web sites are not constant, researchers
have to get a URL of them. We usually use a web searchengine for that purpose. There are, however, some issues ina web search engine. One of them is that it is hard to get aURL unless researchers have an appropriate keyword suchas a full name of a conference. The other issue is that it isdifficult to get a URL of a latest or a next conference web
page because of a delay in data indexing on a web searchengine.
There are another two types of systems for the purpose.
One is conference calendars that are mainly maintained byacademic organizations[2]. Although they aggregate
conference information and provide them to the public,collected conference information are limited in associatedwith a hosted organization. This solution has only a limited
improvement for the issue. The other solution is a webservice. Some services are proposed for the same purpose[3,4]. It is, however, hard to make use of shared information
because of a poor user interface such as full-text search.
These issues in the alternative solutions may give
researchers the impression that such web services are notuseful practically.
CONFSHARE: A UNIFIED CONFERENCE CALENDAR

From these considerations, we developed a ConfShare as aweb-based academic conference information sharing
service. A major difference from other related web services
is to implement an interactive user interface from several
points of view. Figure 1 is a screen shapshot of theConfShare. A main screen is composed of a world map anda list. A list displays either conference information orsubmission deadline information. Information in the list aresorted by date and a user can switch a displayed
information by clicking a tab button on top of the list. Auser can also look at a detail information of a specificconference if she/he clicks an interested entry in the list.
A world map is implemented with a Google Maps API andeach yellow marker in the map displays a location of eachconference. A user, therefore, gets to know locations of theconferences and its submission deadlines that will be held
on a specific location by clicking the marker.
ConfShare also provides an attribute information browser
for interactive filtering in the left side of the main screen(fig. 1). The browser is folded as a default. The browser
enables users to browse four types of attribute informationof a conference. They are a date, a location, a keyword anda shortname of the conference. A shortname means anacronym or an abbreviated name of the conference name.

For example, “CSCW” is a shortname of the “Computer
Supported Cooperative Work” conference. Keywords areextracted from a conference name. For example, ConfSharegets four keywords:“computer”, ”supported”, ”cooperative”
and ”work” from the conference name “Computer
Supported Cooperative Work”. These information areextracted by the system from a posted information or
directly posted by a contributor.
An important point of the attribute browser is to assist ingetting to know conference information that users areinterested in. For example, a user can interactively retrieve
information of conferences that will be held on user’s
country in this autumn. It is difficult to do such query by akeyword search. This function makes ConfShare usefulthan other systems[3,4] because the attribute browser andinteractive filtering can help to find and get an interested
conference even if users do not have specific keywords.
ConfShare is also available from an iPhone and an iPodtouch. A user interface is optimized for these terminals andis quite different from an interface for a web browser. We
carefully implemented the user interface to be able tobrowse a conference data easily from these terminals.
Researchers, therefore, can check upcoming conferences
and submission deadlines in their spare time at anywhere.
CONCLUSIONSWe proposed the ConfShare as a web-based CSCW system
for academic conference information sharing. ConfShareprovides users with a novel data representation andinteractive filtering function. These improvements make itpossible to find and get academic conference informationeven if a user has vague requirements. In other words, it
makes possible to meet wider demands of researchers. We
consider that aggregating academic conference information
brings a great advantage for all researchers. It could reduce
handling time in tasks around conference information.
ConfShare has potential to become such service. In order torealize it, the system needs many users’ cooperative actions
as contributors.
You can use the ConfShare. We maintain the system toverify whether or not ConfShare and its user interface canmotivate researchers to post a conference information. And,
if not, we have to argue that what kind of function orsomeone else will be needed for users to involve an
academic conference information sharing.
REFERENCES

1. ACM SIGMOD, Welcome to DBWORLD.
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/dbworld/. (accessed Sep. 3, 2008).
2. ACM Conference Submission Calendar.
http://campus.acm.org/calendar/. (accessed Sep. 3, 2008).
3. EventSeer. http://eventseer.net/. (accessed Sep. 3, 2008).
4. WikiCFP: a place to organize and share “calls forpapers”. http://www.wikicfp.com/. (accessed Sep. 3, 2008)