Birds of a Feather

What is a bof?

Birds of a Feather (BoF) are non-commercial and focus on community building through interactive presentations and discussions covering a wide variety of topics.

Successful BoF submissions will often involve any combination of presentations, audience discussion, roadmap discussions, question and answer periods, and community meet ups. Before submitting, consider whether your proposed session fits this description. Consider also whether there is another group of people who are likely to submit a similar BoF and whether you should merge your proposal with theirs.

Upon review of your BoF proposal, the BoF committee may suggest combining it with other proposals.

BoFs are not the appropriate venue for:

Preparing Your Submission

A BoF submission includes:

Topics include but are not limited to:

If none of the topic areas fit, please select “Other” on the submission form. Please select “Community Meetings” for society meetings and TOP500.

Session Format

While we do not prescribe how a BoF should be organized, BoFs should have a format that ensures high levels of audience interaction. Talks and presentations should be oriented toward provoking community discussion, rather than being purely informational. Most of the BoF’s time should be dedicated to discussion and interaction. The BoF should allocate no more than 50% of its time to prepared presentations. An example of a useful presentation is a roadmap update to gather feedback on how to orient future efforts in an open-source software project or community standard.

A proposal must be submitted for all BoFs. Even if your BoF has been held at a previous SC conference, you must submit a new proposal to be reviewed and evaluated against the other submissions.

Selected BoF proposals are ranked in terms of their potential for community building, relevance to the expected audience, expected level of audience participation, the timeliness of the topic, and coverage of topics of interest to SC25. Other criteria may be considered as well. BoFs are expected to limit the inclusion of vendor-specific content.

conflict of interest

Please be aware of, and adhere to, these SC Conference guidelines regarding potential conflicts of interest and disclosure.

A potential conflict of interest occurs when a person is involved in making a decision that:

• Could result in that person, a close associate of that person, or that person’s company or institution receiving significant financial gain, such as a contract or grant, or
• Could result in that person, or a close associate of that person, receiving significant professional recognition, such as an award or the selection of a paper, work, exhibit, or other type of submitted presentation.

Program Committee members will be given the opportunity to list potential conflicts of interest during each program’s review process. Program Committee chairs and area chairs will make every effort to avoid assignments that have a potential COI.

According to the SC conference you have a conflict of interest with the following:

• Your PhD advisors, post-doctoral advisors, PhD students, and post-doctoral advisees;
• Family relations by blood or marriage, or equivalent (e.g., a partner);
• People with whom you collaborated in the past five years. Collaborators include: co-authors on an accepted/rejected/pending research paper; co-PIs on an accepted/pending grant; those who fund your research; researchers whom you fund; or researchers with whom you are actively collaborating;
• Close personal friends or others with whom you believe a conflict of interest exists;
• People who were employed by, or a student at, your primary institution(s) in the past five years, or people who are active candidates for employment at your primary institution(s).

Note that “service” collaborations, such as writing a DOE, NSF, or DARPA report, or serving on a program committee, or serving on the editorial board of a journal, do not inherently create a COI.

Other situations can create COIs, and you should contact the Technical Program Chairs for questions or clarification on any of these issues.

Plagiarism

Please review the ACM guidelines on identifying plagiarism.

registration

All BoF speakers, moderators, and session leaders must register for the conference and pay for either a Technical Program, Exhibitor, or Exhibits Only registration. These registration types include access to all BoF sessions, Tuesday–Thursday.

BoF speakers, moderators, and session leaders do not receive honoraria or discounted admission to any conference sessions. By submitting a BoF proposal to SC, you are making a commitment to attend the conference and pay a registration fee upon acceptance of your submission.

Workshop and Tutorial registrations alone do not include Birds of a Feather access. See more information at Registration.

finalizing accepted BoFs

Upon acceptance of your BoF, the session leader must submit an updated abstract and biographical information for each session leader to the SC submissions website before September 29, 2025 to be included in the online SC Schedule.

Archives

BoF materials (i.e., title, abstract, presenter information) are made available in the Technical Program Archives upon submission of final BoF information to the SC submissions website before September 29, 2025.

schedule and location

BoFs are held in parallel tracks at the following times:

• Tuesday, November 18, 12:15–1:15 pm and 5:15–6:45 pm
• Wednesday, November 19, 12:15–1:15 pm and 5:15–6:45 pm
• Thursday, November 20 12:15–1:15 pm

Upon acceptance, a BoF will be scheduled at one of these times. During submission you will be asked for a preferred time.  A draft schedule will be communicated to the organizers of accepted BoFs. If the proposed time for your BoF constitutes a hard scheduling conflict, please let us know immediately. We will try to accommodate requested time/date changes, but we may not be able to honor all requests.

BoFs are expected to be in-person at the conference. Remote participation by organizers and presenters is permitted only in exceptional circumstances and only with the prior approval of the BoF Co-Chairs.

infrastructure

BoFs are assigned either a classroom or a theater room equipped with standard AV facilities:

• Projector
• Microphone and podium
• Wireless lapel microphone or wireless handheld microphone
• Projection screen

Current SC Conference policies and procedures do not include the following in your BoF room:

• Poster boards
• Round tables
• Wired Ethernet connection
• Power strips on the tables or under the chairs
• Recording of the BoF (may be available but is not guarenteed)

We do not anticipate being able to accommodate any requests for additional equipment or reconfiguration of the provided equipment and furniture.