The mission of Computing Research Association’s (CRA) Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is to catalyze the computing research community and enable the pursuit of innovative, high-impact research. CCC conducts activities that strengthen the research community, articulate compelling research visions, and align those visions with pressing national and global challenges. CCC communicates the importance of those visions to policymakers, government and industry stakeholders, the public, and the research community itself.

In accordance with the mission, CCC is issuing a new call for proposals for workshops that will catalyze and enable innovative research at the frontiers of computing.

From the solicitation:

Successful activities will articulate new research visions, galvanize community interest in those visions, mobilize support for those visions from the computing research community, government leaders, and funding agencies, and encourage broader segments of society to participate in computing research and education.

Workshop organizers are expected to bring together a group of scientists and practitioners in the area of interest, and to formulate a program that encourages new ideas, innovative thinking, and broad discussion. Workshops can be of varying sizes, typically ranging from 20 to 100 participants.  It is important that the participants cover a broad spectrum to ensure full coverage of the area, both in terms of content area representation and employment (academia, industry, research labs, and policy and funding organizations).

Workshops are expected to have a tangible output – for example, a whitepaper (or set thereof) or a workshop report. Workshop outcomes should be targeted to multiple audiences (the research community, science policy groups or funding agencies, the general public), and the deliverables should be tailored for easy dissemination.  CCC will help to support both workshop organization and the subsequent generation and communication of the output.

The CCC encourages creative ideas from all segments of the computing research community on topics ranging from the formulation of new basic research areas and technologies to the use of new or existing research ideas and technologies to address important scientific or societal challenges.

This guide shares further insight about the visioning process, from idea conception through program formation.  It includes suggested activities, sample wording and a timeline. Past examples can be found here.

If you have ideas or topics for visioning, please consider submitting a proposal. For CCC planning purposes, proposals with start dates prior to December 2017 should be submitted by March 31, 2017. Proposals should be no more than six pages in length. They should describe the existing or potential vision(s) and proposed activities in detail, including how the larger community will be engaged.

For more information, see the complete call for proposals. And if you have questions, please e-mail us or see the slides from the Visioning Activities Webinar.

We look forward to receiving your ideas!