Authors who intend to submit a Panel proposal should follow the guidelines provided below.

Panels Call for Participation

• Proposal submission deadline: December 11, 2009
• Acceptance notification: January 21, 2010
• Camera ready proposals (with confirmed panelists) due: February 11, 2010

Panels should focus on emerging technologies, controversial issues, or unsolved problems in the World Wide Web community. The goal of a panel is debate–therefore, panels should always reflect more than one point of view.

Panels should be provocative and lively and should inspire thoughtful, engaged discussion, at the event itself and beyond. We expect the panelists to actively engage the audience and help them gain a deeper understanding of important and of controversial issues.

All areas of interests to WWW participants are acceptable as a panel topic. Please contact us before the deadline if you have an idea you would like to discuss with us for suitability. Panel proposals will be accepted on the basis of their audience appeal, credentials of panelists, originality, and focus on disputed topics.

Panel Proposal Submission Procedure

Submissions should include:

• Panel title
• Panel organizer(s)/moderator(s)
• Short description of the topic (suitable for inclusion in the program)
• Panel objective, scope, and target audience
• Detailed description of the topic, including suitable references
• List of the debatable points of view
• Panel format (e.g., presentations, Q&A, etc.) including a detailed timeline covering all activities - (the entire panel duration should be 90 minutes)
• The names and affiliations of the panelists, and their credentials in the form of a short bio for each
• A statement for each panelist, indicating whether the panelist’s participation is (a) confirmed or (b) pending in the case s/he has already been contacted and is not yet committed or (c) not yet contacted. At submission time, we expect that at least 50% of the panelists would have been confirmed, in particular senior panelists. Do not list unconfirmed panelists who are unlikely to participate.
• Short paragraph stating the credentials/bios of organizer(s), moderator(s) and each panelist.
• The panel proposal should also indicate whether other similar panels have been formed recently in other conferences or workshops. If so, what is the difference?

Proposals should be no more than 5 pages in length and can be submitted in either HTML or PDF. Please use CMT (Conference Management Service) to upload panel submissions: https://cmt.research.microsoft.com/WWW2010. Inquiries can be sent to panels at www2010.org – if you have a panel idea you would like to discuss but are unsure about, please contact us.

Panel format

Panels should last 90 minutes and typically include three to five panelists plus a moderator. Be creative about the panel format - use whatever means is necessary to get the panelists points over most clearly and succinctly, such that points of contrast and debate are clear to audience members. A typical format includes:

• moderator introduction
• brief position statements by domain experts (it’s essential that this part does not exceed a total of 30 minutes divided by all panelists)
• discussions (at least 40 minutes divided by all participants)
• closing statements from panelists and moderator

You are welcome to use various forms of media and props to help engage the audience. We also strongly encourage you promote your panel among those people you know will be interested in the topic as part of a more general promotion of the www2010 conference.

Duties of the Panel Moderator(s)

The panel moderator is the most important participant in a panel. The most important part of the moderator’s job occurs well before the conference begins and the panel happens. It is the duty of the moderator to frame the panel, and write and enticing and inviting description of the panel. Be controversial! It is also the panel moderators job to invite panelists, with our help if needed, and to ensure the panelists prepare lively and controversial initial presentation and come prepared to engage in a lively debate as part of the panel. Panel moderators thus must spend a significant amount of grooming and promoting the panel, and “herding cats”, i.e., getting the panelists to adequately prepare pitches and making sure that each panelist will have a distinct non-trivial message or role.

The moderator must take an active role during the panel to stimulate debate, ensure that the panelists stay on time and on track and to encourage audience participation.

A panel should not be a stage for panelists to give a series of unrelated lectures. The details of how the panel is run in terms of audience involvement is up to the panel moderator and the panelists, but we recommend that you strongly encourage and inspire active audience participation. We will give preference to panels that plan to actively engage the audience - Be creative! Be provocative! Use physical props, SMS and microblogging services. If you need help setting these up, we will do what we can to help you.

Panels Co-Chairs

• Prabhakar Raghavan, Yahoo! Research (USA)
• Elizabeth Churchill, Yahoo! Research (USA)

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