Workshop Submissions

Your workshop submission

The IDCC 2016 workshops will take place on Monday 22 February and Thursday 25 February, either side of the conference. Each workshop can take up a half-day (3.5 hours) or a whole day. Workshops can be booked separately to the main conference and delegates can attend as many workshops as they would like to. The workshops are promoted alongside the conference and branded as an integral part of IDCC16. The conference registration fee does not cover the costs of the workshops, though. You thus have two choices when making a workshop submission as to how it will be funded:

• Delegate fees, with a possible guarantee of minimum paymemt from you, or
• Fully-funded or subsidised by you

You must state as part of the submission process which you wish to choose. Your choice will have no bearing on whether your workshop is selected from amongst the submissions. We make those choices based on the quality of the proposal and its relevance to the IDCC audience alone. More information on the funding options is provided in the section below. Here we describe the other information which should form part of your submission:

• Workshop title: A one-line (ideally less) description of the workshop.
• Workshop organisers: A one-line description of those organising and/or delivering the workshop - individuals, an organisation, or both.
• Brief description: a short description of the workshop's aim, content and audience. Ideally less than 60 words this should suitable for use in an overview programme (where it may link to a fuller description) or part of the booking process.
• Long description: A fuller description of your workshop's aims, content, audience and methods that can be presented to delegates and potential delegates as part of a more detailed programme. This should fit comfortable on one side of a sheet of paper and can include any other information, such as descriptions or brief biographies of the presenters, that you think may help people to choose between workshops.
• Room layout/workshop style: There are a number of options for room layouts. The best will depend on the type of event you propose to run. You can nominate cabaret-style (presenters at front, small groups of seats around tables), classroom-style (rows of tables facing the presenters) or boardroom-style (all seated around a central table). If some other option would suit, let us know in your proposal and we can discuss it with you if it is accepted. If some other layout is critical to the success of your workshop, you must let us know this in your proposal.
• Minimum/maximum delegate numbers: The minimum number of people (excluding speakers) you need for the event to be viable, and the maximum number you can cope with before it becomes unworkable or unaffordable.
• Number of speakers: An estimate will suffice.
• Funding model: See below.
• Equipment requirements: Projectors, sound, flipcharts, whiteboards etc - let us know what you need now, not on the day of the event!
• Workshop length: Half day or full day. This is important, and you would be surprised how many people forget to tell us this.

Publicity

Once accepted, we'll promote your workshop alongside the conference - it will appear on our web pages and in other publicity which covers programme detail and it will be bookable through the same system as that used for the main conference. Workshops can be booked as stand-alone tickets or as part of a conference booking.

However, it's in your interests to take on promotion for the workshop yourself. You'll have a better understanding of your ideal audience and probably know better than us how to reach them. We assume that you'll work with us to get the best possible audience for your workshop.

Cost of running a workshop

Workshops have a fixed underlying cost which applies up to 25 delegates. The venue then charges us an additional per-delegate cost which we need to recover. Delegate numbers include the speakers/presenters. Costs are the same regardless of how the workshop will be funded.

• Half-day workshop: €2000 up to 25 people, €50 per person thereafter
• Full-day workshop: €3000 up to 25 people, €80 per person thereafter

These costs cover room hire and setup, AV provision, administration, catering and printed programmes and delegate lists. Catering includes morning and/or afternoon break and lunch for both half-day and full-day workshops. If a workshop is cancelled sufficiently early, no costs will apply. After a cut-off date, the full costs are payable regardles of whether you choose to go ahead or the number of delegates.

Funding models

If you have money available to run an event, you can choose to pay for the workshop and thus make it free for delegates to attend. This is a popular format for workshops being run as part of funded projects or to learn about products. If you wish to cap the total cost of the workshop to you, you must let us know the maximum number of delegates you are willing to accept and we will ensure that no more than that number register. If you don't cap the number of delegates, you are liable for whatever costs are associated with the number who register. That could reach €9000 for a full-day workshop with 100 attendees. We'll invoice you for the workshop cost.

If you don't have money to fund a workshop, delegates will be charged to attend instead. This is a popular format for training sessions, hack events and many other topics. However, we need to be sure we raise the minimum workshop cost so we'll ask you to guarantee any shortfall. There is a simple way to avoid having to be liable for this cost, through cut-off dates.

However you choose to fund your workshop, we'll let you know what the cut-off date is where the venue locks us in to payment. We can provide you with details of the numbers registered shortly before the cut-off date and give you the opportunity to withdraw at that point if numbers are too low. If so, there's no need to pay (funded workshops) or to cover the shortfall (charged workshops.) If the numbers are already sufficient, those running charged workshops can proceed knowing that it's all paid for. Only if you choose to proceed even though numbers aren't yet sufficient do you run the risk that you'll be asked to pay for a shortfall.

It's in your interests to submit your proposal as early as possible. We'll be running a rolling acceptance process for workshops up to the submission deadline. Early submissions can be promoted for longer, with more likelihood of attracting attendees.