Continuous Information Provisioning for the Conference

Participation Process

Paul Heiniz, Wolfgang Kluth, Karl-Heinz Krempels, Christoph Terwelp and Stefan W¨uller

Information Systems & Databases, RWTH University, Aachen, Germany

Keywords:

Conference Planner, Conference Management, Social Networking, Academic Networking.

Abstract:

Conference organization and participation becomes subject of process optimization to increase the efﬁciency

of knowledge transfer and the scientiﬁc exploitation of emerging communities of interest. Process optimization

starts with a process model to analyse the planning aspects, the information ﬂow, the coordination efﬁciency,

and ﬁnally the efﬁciency of the knowledge transfer. Considering the information ﬂow and the coordination

efﬁciency as prerequisite for the knowledge transfer efﬁciency analysis we state that a mobile interface to the

conference management information system would improve the coordination process during the conference

and fosters the emergence of communities of interest. This paper presents an approach for a mobile conference

planner application, integrated into a conference management system. The proposed functionality focuses on

the improvement concerning orientation during a conference, material access, and managing social contacts

working conference comprehensively. Furthermore, the post-processing of the attended contributions in the

context of a conference shall be facilitated retrospectively.

1 INTRODUCTION

In this position paper we introduce the concept of

a conference planner application for mobile devices

providing a seamless transition between the prepa-

ration for the conference and the working up of the

attended contributions subsequently to a conference.

The conference organizer’s web platform and the con-

ference planner mobile application staying synchro-

nized supporting participants and speakers from the

creation of the schedule and from the write up to the

working up phase with keeping their data organizedin

one single place, respectively. Furthermore, the con-

ference planner application will follow a conference

comprehensive approach, i.e., there will be one appli-

cation for a large set of conferences of different sci-

entiﬁc ﬁelds enabling its users to integrate data from

conferences visited in the past, e.g., contacts or a user

proﬁle, into current conferences in which the user is

going to participate.

Features of already existing conference applica-

tions regarding orientation during the conference, ma-

terial access, and managing social contacts which fa-

cilitate our goal were examined, selected, and will be

integrated into the conference planner application.

This paper is structured as follows: Section 2 in-

troduces the standard conference process without the

usage of a conference mobile application. By means

of an use case scenario, provided with Section 3, we

outline how the conference procedure is simpliﬁed

through our conference planner. In section 4 we give

a survey of existing work in the ﬁeld of mobile con-

ference applications and describe to what extent the

conference planner distinguishes. Section 5 depicts

our approach for developing the conference planner

application and the provided features. We conclude

this paper with an overview of projected steps con-

cerning the application’s development process.

2 CONFERENCE PROCESS

DESCRIPTION

The selected activities of a conference participa-

tion for authors and visitors can be divided into

three phases: the phase before the conference (pre-

conference), the phase during the conference takes

place, and the phase after the conference (post-

conference). A complete overviewof the three phases

and the involved tasks is given by 2. Below we con-

sider the conference process for authors whose tasks

to perform are a superset of those of a visitor.

The pre-conference phase includes the paper

Heiniz P., Kluth W., Krempels K., Terwelp C. and Wüller S..

Continuous Information Provisioning for the Conference Participation Process.

DOI: 10.5220/0004630400990105

In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Data Communication Networking, 10th International Conference on e-Business and 4th

International Conference on Optical Communication Systems (ICE-B-2013), pages 99-105

ISBN: 978-989-8565-72-3

 2013 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

submission, the reviewing process and the individual

preparation for the conference. The reviewing

process can be divided into subtasks. First the author

has to sign up for the conference organizer’s web

page. After the registration process the respective

conference page has to be visited for uploading the

paper. This process is called regular paper submis-

sion. After the paper has been reviewed, the author

receives a notiﬁcation concerning the acceptance

of the submitted paper and possible information

about required improvements. After revision, the

camera-ready submission is ensued by the author

which will be printed in the conference proceedings.

After the camera-ready submission deadline has been

reached, the registration for the conference will be

activated and the respective web page will contain

the appreciable information to enable participants

to plan the conference attendance. The conference

planning process involves tasks like travel booking,

accommodation, and generating a conference sched-

ule on the base of selected conference components

like presentations, workshops, and entire sessions

whose compositions are described below.

Phase 2 consists of the conference participation.

Usually the printed conference schedule generated

by each participant on the conferences web interface

is the only document providing an overview of the

individual conference processes. Several sessions can

run in parallel during a conference. A single session

is partitioned into contributions, e.g., presentations,

workshops, and notes. 1 outlines four sessions

running in parallel. The grey boxes represent the

contributions which are divided into four parts (see

1):

(a) Actual Contribution: in this sub-phase a presen-

tation, a workshop, or a note is given.

(b) Room Search: before a conference participant

joins a presentation she has to ﬁnd the respective

room.

time span where question can be asked to the speakers

and the answers and interesting remarks can be noted

for further purposes in phase 3.

(d) Micro Community of Interest: after (c) usually

the only occasion to exchange each other, e.g., to

communicate contacts is on the way to the succeeding

presentation.

In the post conference phase, beginning with

the return to the work place, the visitor reviews the

attended contributions using the notes made during

the conference. The extracted information can be

involved in ongoing or future work. In the follow-up

phase, contacts made on the conference can be

Figure 1: Detail View of a Conference Participation.

strengthened or new ones can be initiated on base of

conference notes or exchanged material.

3 USE CASE SCENARIO

In this section we provide a use case scenario to give

an overview of how the purposed conference planner

application is embedded into the common conference

process and how it can be used. We consider a confer-

ence visitor (Alex), in the role as speaker/author and

attendee and using the conference planner in all of the

three conference phases.

3.1 Pre-conference Usage

From write up to camera ready submission the actions

are not inﬂuenced by applying the conference planner

and they are accomplished as described in Section 2.

When the registration process is completed, Alex

starts to plan the forthcoming conference. The back-

end automatically creates a proﬁle for her contribu-

tion linked to her ensued paper. There she is able to

provide additional materials (e.g., presentation slides)

and include an abstract. Other participants can see her

proﬁle through the conference planner website and

app. If Alex has no account from previous confer-

ences, she has to create a new one including a short

self-portrait and personal information (e.g., univer-

sity/company, country). From a catalog, Alex selects

contributions she likes to attend by marking them.

With the help of the provided venue information Alex

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100

Figure 2: Standard Conference Procedure.

books hotel and ﬂight. She can also plan touristic

events beside the conference. A bidirectional syn-

chronization between website and conference planner

app takes place in certain timesteps or can be invoked

manually.

3.2 Usage During Conference

During the conference, Alex can use the conference

planner on her mobile device in online and ofﬂine

mode. In contrast to the online mode, there exist the

constraints that app-speciﬁc changes (e.g., adding a

speech or marking it as a favorite) cannot be synchro-

nized with the web-proﬁle and that changes w.r.t. con-

ference organization (e.g., the annulation of a talk)

cannot be requested in the ofﬂine mode. However,

changes are stored and will be pushed to the server

when Alex’s mobile device regains an internet con-

nection. For the following events it is assumed that

Alex uses the app in online mode. The ﬁrst session

starts and Alex takes a look at her conference sched-

ule in the conference planning app to get the room

number and an overview of the topic, so that she is

prepared. She comes into contact with the man sit-

ting next to her. He mentions an interesting presen-

tation in the next session, but the next contribution

overlaps with Alex’s selection of talks. She unmarks

her choice and marks the recommended presentation.

While she accompanies her new acquaintance to the

next presentation, she scans the QR-code from his

name plate with the conference planner application to

add his contact to her friend list, so she is able to stay

in touch with him. While she attends her second pre-

sentation, Alex makes some notes with the conference

planner app directly into the presentation view. Some

time later after ﬁnishing her note, a popup opens in

the app and providesa hint, that the place for an ongo-

ing presentation changed and that it is changed in her

schedule, too. In a break between two presentations

Alex takes a look at the newsfeed of the conference

planner. There, she discovers an announcement of a

meet and greet in the lobby.

3.3 Post-conference Usage

Two month later Alex wants to recondition one of the

attended contributions because she can use its content

for her ongoing work. She accesses her personal data

including additives like notes or changes of the sched-

ule made during the conference through the confer-

ence online platform. She navigates to the respective

contribution proﬁle and has access to the contribution

related data. First she downloads the associated pa-

per and reads her notes which are displayed in a pro-

vided view. She realizes that she had some questions

she was not able to ask after the speech. From the

contribution view, she picks the mail address of the

speaker and send him a message with the remaining

questions.

4 SURVEY OF EXISTING

SYSTEMS

In this chapter the features of a wide range of confer-

ence guide apps considering those discussed in Sec-

tion 3 are outlined.

We picked out three conference guide apps from

areas of computer science, information visualization,

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101

and wind energy, providing different sets of features

to the conference attendees and reﬂecting the current

market conditions (see 1):

• CM, 2011 (IVDA, 2011) (Conference Manager):

This app realizes a constrained conference com-

prehensive approach, meaning users have the pos-

sibility to access completely different conferences

concerning the area of visualization information

within one app. Social components were hardly

considered.

• GDC, 2013 (UBM Tech, 2013) (Game Devel-

opers Conference): A conference guide with ex-

tensive additional features concerning social net-

working: user proﬁles and user states, newsfeeds,

connections to social networks and friend lists.

Furthermore, past GDC events can be accessed

from the app.

• EWEA, 2013 (Sherpa Solutions, 2013) (Euro-

pean Wind Energy Association): An app related

only to the EWEA in 2013, a conference on wind

energy. It provides different criteria to visualize

upcoming sessions and connections to social net-

works but no simple possibility to contact other

conference attendees.

In the following, we depict the analyzed features seg-

mented in two groups: orientation features and social

networking features.

4.1 Orientation Features

The possibility to list the conference’s agenda to en-

able the users to assemble their own schedule for the

conference, to search for persons and sessions, to give

information about each session, authors, and speak-

ers, and the integration of a newsfeed are the basic el-

ements which are available for almost all conference

guide apps. The considered apps can be used in of-

ﬂine mode and are able to update themselves automat-

ically during launching if a connection to the internet

is available.

Venue information help users to orientate them-

selves within the conference territory by providing

maps of the conference building. Additionally, infor-

mation about nearby hotels, public transport, as well

as event FAQs are represented.

4.2 Community of Interest

To facilitate communities of interest social network

accessibility to Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn is in-

cluded (GDC, EWEA). On the one hand, Twitter is

used as a newsfeed to spread updates concerning the

conference (e.g., a postponement of an presentation)

(GDC, EWEA), on the other hand it can be used by

users to post messages which can either be read by

every conference attendee or only by friends (speci-

ﬁed in a friend list) of the poster using the guide app

(GDC). The Facebook connection links to the confer-

ence’s Facebook page, where additional conference

comprehensive information can be propagated, photo

and video material be accessed, and contacts be estab-

lished. Furthermore, the social network LinkedIn can

be used to establish business contacts. In addition,

the GDC app enables a user to enter a state concern-

ing the session he joins or the place he is located and

to take a photo which both can be posted in each of

the mentioned social networks.

An individually composed friend list as an op-

tional feature of the GDC app enables a user to keep

updated about her friends’ activities and a possibility

to restrict communication, e.g., for Twitter as men-

tioned above.

The possible entries of a user proﬁle as it is used in

the GDC app, are only restricted to basic information,

e.g., name, company, activities and some private set-

tings. Proﬁles aren’t used to establish a link between

users of the same interest group.

In spite of the lack of common social features of

conference guide apps the conference manager pro-

vides a meet-me feature, i.e., a user can mark her po-

sition on the conference map and communicate it to

other participants.

5 CONTINUOUS CONFERENCE

PROCESS SUPPORT BY

MOBILE APPLICATION

Although the evaluated apps, as described in the pre-

vious section, fulﬁll numerous requested features,

each single app lacks some important functionality

to overcome the support during a conference and the

assistance to process the attended contribution in the

post-conference phase. The issue of accessing mate-

rial related to the attended contributions in most cases

is completely neglected. At best the respected paper

could be accessed. No single app has been discovered

providing functionality to access audio and video ma-

terial or speaker’s slides. Alike the possibility to make

notes at the appropriate contributions view was recog-

nized to be absent. For each contribution the attendee

has to involve additional applications and to fall back

to pen and paper to perform an adequate documenta-

tion of each contribution which aggravates the process

of workup in the post-conference phase.

Furthermore, no conference application was able

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Table 1: Feature Overview of considered Conference Guide Applications (* the purposed conference planner).

orientation CP* CM GDC EWEA

agenda yes yes yes yes

individual schedule yes yes yes yes

management yes yes yes yes

contribution details yes yes partially yes

venue information yes no partially partially

conference comprehensive yes partially partially no

history yes yes yes no

synchronization yes no no no

ofﬂine mode yes yes yes yes

contribution search yes yes yes yes

material CP CM GDC EWEA

paper yes yes no no

slides yes no no no

audio/video yes no no no

make notes yes no no no

social contacts CP CM GDC EWEA

Twitter yes no yes yes

Facebook yes no yes yes

LinkedIn yes no yes yes

newsfeed yes no yes no

friendlist yes no yes no

user status yes no yes no

user photos yes no yes no

people search yes no yes yes

to synchronize to the conference organizer’s back-

end which plays an important role in using the indi-

vidual preparation data created in the pre-conference

phase during the conference and especially accessing

the data logged into the mobile device of each par-

ticipant in the post-conference phase from a desktop

computer.

The approach of developing one app which could

be applied to a large spectrum of different conferences

has not been realized yet. Either data of the same

conference of the past or a very restricted amount of

different conferences of the same ﬁeld could be ac-

cessed.

Our aim is to develop a mobile application which

supports the conference participant especially in

phase 2, that is during the conference. The appli-

cation should facilitate the aspects of orientation

during a conference, material access, and managing

social contacts. Furthermore, all data concerning

the previously visited conferences should be kept

and organized in one single place for the respective

user. Especially, the working up of each contribution

visited during the conference in the post-conference

phase shall be supported. In the following we take a

closer look at those aspects.

Orientation During Conference: One feature

is the synchronization of all data with the backend

of the conference organizer. All user speciﬁc data

are stored in a database connected to the backend,

this allows managing content on different platforms

(web and mobile). The user has access to all pre-

sentations and workshops with detailed information

about authors, speakers, and spectators. She can

mark presentations to add them to her own schedule

or to add them to a read-later list. A ’remember

me’-function for marked activities and a highlighting

of presentations which are currently taking place are

integrated into the application. Additionally, notes

can be made for each presentation. An important

feature for the post-conference phase is the ability

to review conferences of the past accessible through

a history. Other features are the access to venue

information and a search functionality for people and

activities. The application supports an ofﬂine and

online mode to guarantee perpetual data access.

Material Access: During and after each confer-

ence the detail view of each contribution can be used

to access the material of the selected contribution.

For each contribution the authors respectively the

speakers determine what kind of material will be

presented: papers, slides, audio or video records.

Those can only be accessed when the application is

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103

Figure 3: Web Front End: Post-Processing Material Access. Figure 4: Web Front End: Schedule View.

Figure 5: Mobile Application: from conference selection to presentation detail view.

used in online mode.

Managing Communities of Interest: Another

aspect is the social component of the application to

facilitate communities of interest. While features

like friend lists and friend status are common in

social networks, most of the conference applications

are missing this social function set. We integrate

the functionality to add friends, visitors, speakers,

and authors to a friend list. The user has access to

contact information of participants if they agree to

share these and the ability to send messages to each

person who is attending the conference. The user gets

current news about public actions via a newsfeed.

The integration of Facebook, LinkedIn, and the

external conference site gives a point of intersection

to the public audience.

6 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE

WORK

By means of the issued challenges and goals to be

fulﬁlled by the comprehensive conference planner we

are in the process of developing a prototype for the

mobile application working with real data of preced-

ing conferences. Several views of our paper prototype

concerning the conference platform front end and the

conference planner application can be found in Figure

3, 4 and 5. Hereafter the prototype will be introduced

during an appropriate upcoming conference, associ-

ated with an evaluation phase concerning user tests

and usability tests. A successfully emerging applica-

tion would cause a second developing phase consist-

ing of the integration of evaluation results and the ex-

tension of the conference planner for a wide range of

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104

conferences with respect to different scientiﬁc ﬁelds.

Further steps would be to integrate the confer-

ence planner into emerging academic social net-

works. Academic social networks collect data from

researcher proﬁles including, e.g., ﬁelds of research

and from recorded search keywords of certain scien-

tiﬁc software (e.g. Mendeley (Henning and Reichelt,

2008)) or webpages (de Oliveira et al., 2011), (Lopes

et al., 2010).

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