APRICOT 2006 CALL FOR TECHNICAL CONFERENCE TRACK CHAIRS Asia Pacific Regional Internet Conference on Operational Technologies Perth, Australia Feb 22 - Mar 3, 2006 The APRICOT 2006 Program Committee is seeking interested and qualified Track Chairs to actively assist the Committee in recruiting speakers and organizing technical tracks for the 2006 Asia Pacific Regional Internet Conference on Operational Technologies. The main responsibility of the Track Chair is to identify, recruit high quality speakers to share their expertise on operationally relevent topics. As in past years, the APRICOT Program Committee will issue a general call for presentations, which typically elicits a large number of submissions. These proposals will be provided to the Track Chairs for consideration, but it is expected that the Track Chairs will primarily use their own personal networks to recruit speakers who may not have participated in past APRICOT events. Specific Track Chair responsibilities include: * Identifying and describing a track topic and relevant potential track components (panel discussions, pro/con debates, etc.) within the track that will be interesting and valuable to the APRICOT audience. Preliminary Track descriptions are due at the time of nomination, or by June 15, 2005. * Helping to publicize and recruit speakers, session moderators, and participants for their track and the conference in general. * Vetting and recommending speakers and their subjects for their Track to the Program Committee. Detailed Track content recommendations are due on August 29, 2005. * Requiring and confirming that speakers submit their proposed materials in a timely manner. Track chairs should submit speaker recommendations and abstracts to the Program Committee by September 26, 2005. Selected speakers will be announced by the Program Committee on or before October 10, 2005. * Evaluating submitted materials for content and quality suitable for an international technical/operations conference. Track chairs should submit full/detailed presentation outlines to the Program Committee by November 7, 2005. * Serving as a liaison between the Program Committee and the selected participants in your Track. Track chairs should submit all complete presentation materials to the Program Committee by January 9, 2006. * This year we will require that speakers must supply their program material in advance so that we can confirm operational content and that there is not inappropriate sales material. * Track Chairs are members of the Apricot Program Committee and will share the responsibility of determining overall program issues and planning. Track Chairs are encouraged to help find speakers for other tracks and tutorials as well. Workshop Chair and Tutorial Chair These positions are similar to the Track Chairs described above, but will be responsible for recruiting and facilitating instructors for five-day and half-day/full day instructional tutorials, respectively. A total of 5-6 Track Chairs will be selected by the Program Committee, along with a Tutorial Chair and Workshop Chair, with the expectation that 4-6 Tracks will ultimately be scheduled for presentation. Please feel free to nominate yourself or someone other than yourself who might be appropriate for either of these positions. The deadline for receiving Conference Track and Tutorial Track Chair nominations is May 2, 2005. Results of the selection process will be announced by May 18, 2005. ABOUT THE APRICOT AUDIENCE The APRICOT audience is mainly comprised of technical network operators and professional engineers with experience levels ranging from (almost) newbie to seasoned, senior technical management. APRICOT audiences always include native speakers of a dozen or more languages, so written materials and presentations should be tuned appropriately. Each year, the majority of APRICOT attendees travel internationally and commit considerable sums relative to their local economies to participate in APRICOT; they expect the highest possible quality in presentation content and delivery. APRICOT CONFERENCE TRACKS, SESSIONS, & TUTORIALS Historically, tutorials have focused on core operational skills and basic protocol knowledge, with conference sessions highlighting day-to-day operations and recent/emerging issues within a 12-18 month time horizon. APRICOT Conference Tracks are full-day events. Each Track typically encompasses three 90-minute Sessions composed of 3-4 presenters (speakers) per session; accordingly each presentation should be designed to be approximately 20-30 minutes in duration. On the recommendation of the Track Chair, individual Sessions may be moderated by persons with expertise appropriate to the subject matter of the session. Session Moderators may assist in managing speaker time and soliciting questions from the audience. APRICOT Tutorials are half or full day workshops which focus on a particular subject in-depth. They may be presented by a single Instructor, or a team of instructors working together. Tutorial attendance is typically charged separately from APRICOT conference attendance, so it is essential that tutorials are of the highest quality and deliver concrete operational value to participants. The above descriptions are suggestions only, based on past successful program offerings. Prospective Track and Tutorial Chairs are encouraged to suggest alternative schedules or structures for organizing Conference Tracks and Tutorials to the APRICOT Program Committee. *IMPORTANT NOTE* APRICOT is a TECHNICAL and OPERATIONAL conference. Marketing and commercial content is limited to the appropriate fora (e.g., designated demo areas, "Beer 'n Gear" events) and otherwise restricted from the official program. The Program Committee and Track Chairs are charged with maintaining the technical standards of APRICOT, and will therefore not accept inappropriate materials. To the greatest extent possible, all official conference materials will be designed and presented in a vendor neutral format. APRICOT attendees are technical professionals, and proposed conference materials should be appropriate to the audience. All sessions will provide time for Q&A, and presenters should be prepared to receive detailed technical questions, and to provide appropriately detailed technical responses. The APRICOT Program Committee reserves the right withdraw speaking invitations or to disallow presentations that are inconsistent with the goals and standards set forth in this call for proposals. APRICOT FUNDING AND SUPPORT APRICOT is a not-for-profit event. Every effort is made to keep attendances fee low in order to reach diverse target groups from both the developed and developing countries of the Asia Pacific region. Registration fees are waived for all Track Chairs, Tutorial instructors, and Speakers, however it is generally impossible for APRICOT to underwrite travel expenses for speakers. Only in exceptional hardship circumstances will APRICOT be able to consider assisting Track Chairs or Tutorial instructors with travel expenses. A small number of conference fellowships will be made available (on the basis of personal and local need) to prospective conference attendees from Asia Pacific region; additional information about these fellowships is available at http://www.2006.apricot.net/fellowship.html (TBA). APRICOT 2006 IMPORTANT MILESTONES: 02 May 2005: Receive all Track, Workshop, and Tutorial Chair nominations 18 May 2005: Track Chair selections announced 15 June 2005: Basic Track outlines submitted by Track Chairs to Program Committee General Presentation RFP distributed by Program Committee 29 August 2005: Initial presentation proposals submitted by Track Chairs to Program Committee 26 September 2005: Final presentation proposals submitted by Track Chairs to Program Committee 10 October 2005: Approved presentation tracks announced by Program Committee Selected APRICOT 2006 Presenters notified; 07 November 2005: Detailed presentations outlines submitted by Track Chairs to Program Committee Conference Track schedules finalized 09 January 2006: Full presentation materials submitted by Track Chairs to Program Committee 22 February 2006: APRICOT 2006 Workshops begin (through 26 February) 27 February 2006: APRICOT 2006 Conference Begins NOMINATING YOURSELF OR OTHERS AS A TRACK CHAIR If you would like to be considered as a TRACK CHAIR, please copy the following form, fill it in and email it to mailto:chair.submission@apricot.net If you know of someone else that you believe would make a good Track Chair, please forward this email to them and encourage them to submit the form, or fill in as much of the form as you can and include your contact info in the section for the "Nominator" and email it to mailto:program@apricot.net with the word "Nomination" in the subject line. -------------------- NOMINATOR CONTACT INFO (If nominating another person, please put your info here, if you are doing this for yourself you do not need to fill in this section) Nominator Name: Nominator Title: Nominator Voice Phone: Nominator Fax: Nominator email: ------------------------ TRACK CHAIR PERSONAL INFORMATION (This should be info about the person who would be the Track Chair) First (Given) Name: Middle Name: Last (Family) Name: Title: Company / School / Affiliation: Organization URL: City: State: Country: Voice Phone: Extension: Fax: email: Personal URL: Short Bio (please include enough information that we can determine that you are would be qualified as a track chair): Please also include a photo if possible. Assistant Name (Person who may be administratively submitting this for the speaker or someone who is an alternate contact for chair): Assistant Title: Assistant Voice Phone: Assistant Fax: Assistant email: ------------------------ CONTENT INFO (Select or suggest one or more Track subject you would be interested in Chairing): * Network security * Address planning, conservation, responsibility, IPv6 * Network planning, management and traffic engineering * Operation, NOC, Helpdesk and issues in deploying Internet Infrastructure * Internet exchanges, peering and collocation * Hot topics in future network protocols and techniques * BIND, DNSSEC, and Reverse and multilingual DNS * Broadband first/last mile access technologies * Mobile and wireless technologies * Content, Applications, Email, streaming and multimedia infrastructure * Service and server scaling, Redundancy and reliability, Open source * VoIP * Other Describe: Please put down any other thoughts, suggestions, ideas or comments: ------------------------ More information on the conference will be made available at http://www.2006.apricot.net/program.html Thanks for your interest in APRICOT 2006! Robert J. Berger, Chair (rberger at ibd dot com) Tom Vest, Co-Chair (tvest at pch dot net) APRICOT 2006 Program Committee