The following conference planning information is provided to anyone who is planning an ACM  conference that is either sponsored by SIGCOMM or any other SIG that sponsors a medium-size (200-600 person), single track, technical conference, without exhibits.

If you are about to join a conference committee, let me assure you that planning conferences has been quite rewarding for me (for 20 years), mostly because of all the people whom I have met and worked with in the process of putting on a great conference.  Yes, it's true that conference planning is sometimes described with various negative adjectives, and yes, it can be time-consuming during a crunch period.  However, the SECRET hardest part about conference planning is coming face-to-face with a person that you have worked with for months via phone and email; the real face just doesn't always match that "imagined face you were talking to"!

I particularly want to thank SIGCOMM volunteers Shukri Abdallah, Lyman Chapin, Vint Cerf, Craig Partridge, and Greg Wetzel for their contributions to this incredible collection.

Thanks, Chris (chris@cs.utexas.edu) SIGCOMM Conference Coordinator & Conference Approver

1. The first and foremost resource that you should be aware of is the wonderful group of ACM's SIG Services and the name of your SIG Program Director.  This person has experience in conference planning, has history data on other conferences, and will help in innumerable ways.
2. Your next resource is ACM's SIG Conference Manual (note:  the online version is not 100% complete.)
3. A resource that may interest the General Chair is an annual conference-planning workshop that is given annually by SIG Services and ACM volunteers.
4. Surprisingly, the online conference manual does not have a nice summary chart showing milestones for all conference committee members - here's what is online.  I have an incomplete list of more detailed milestones.
5. ACM and IEEE have similar conference planning forms called the TMRF - Technical Meeting Request Form.  I have a better name for it:  it's your business plan or roadmap.  Thus, all committee members should be involved in the process and should have a copy once it is completed.  The chair and treasurer are responsible for this plan, but it's everyones' planning tool, and everyone will need to give their input into the plan.
6. The following material is years worth of suggestions, plans, lists, feedback from various conferences since 1992.  It is mostly uneditted, and is not completely uptodate.  However, there are some gems hidden in the files.  I have divided the files by committee role, but some of the files may apply to all roles.  (Unfortunately, I haven't had time to create hypertext docs, so this is more of an ftp archive.)
• Of interest to ALL committee members
• General Chair
• Program Chair (includes proceedings, online copies of paper, and student paper award)
• Tutorial Chair (includes some tutorial registration history)
• Treasurer (includes recent tmrf's)
• Publicity
• Fund Raising
• Local Arrangements (includes hotel comps)
• Book Publishers (of interest to treasurer, registration chair, and local arrangements chair)
• Registration (includes complimentary registration issues)
• Student Travel Grants Chair (includes student dinner invite)
• Student Poster Chair
• Workshop Chairs
• Webmaster
• Outrageous Opinion Session
7. Previous conference web pages are an important resource.  See SIGCOMM conference archives as well as other conferences currently underway.
8. And lastly, if you are interested in sponsoring a SIGCOMM conference for some future year, you will need to present a SITE proposal.  (If you are interested in being a technical program chair, please note that these positions are selected by the SIGCOMM Technical Advisory Committee.  URL is TBD.)