The Steering Board of the ACM International Conference on Multimodal
Interaction (ICMI) invites proposals to host 27th Annual Conference,
to be held between the end of September and mid-November 2025.
Priority will be given for proposals hosted in Asia and Australia
continents.

Strong proposals from other regions are also welcome. ICMI 2020 was
held as a virtual conference (originally planned to be in Utrecht, the
Netherlands), ICMI 2021 was in Montreal, Canada, and ICMI 2022 was
recently held in Bengaluru, India. ICMI 2023 is planned to be held in
France, and ICMI 2024 in Costa Rica. The bidding process is done in
two stages. During the first stage, the initial proposals will be
reviewed by the steering committee to identify promising bids and
request additional information if necessary. During the second stage,
the revised proposals will be reviewed and the final selection is
done.

Evaluation
Proposals will be evaluated according to the following criteria (unordered):

·       Experience and reputation of General Chairs and Program Chairs
·       Local multimodal interaction community support
·       (Local) government and industry support
·       Support and opportunities for students
·       Accessibility and attractiveness of proposed site
·       Suitability of proposed dates (with list of specific conflicts to avoid)
·       Adequacy of conference facilities for the anticipated number
of attendees
·       Adequacy of accommodations and food services in a range of
price categories and close to the conference facilities
·       Overall balance of budget projections
·       Geographical balance with regard to previous ICMI meetings

All communications, including request for information and bid
submission, should be sent to the ICMI Steering Board Chair (Albert
Ali Salah, a.a.salah@uu.nl).

Important Dates
For ICMI 2025 bids:
·       March 10, 2023  - Notify intention to submit proposal via email
·       April 10, 2023  - Draft proposals due
·       May 3, 2023 - Feedback to bidders
·       June 2, 2023 - Final bids due
·       June 20, 2023 - Bid selected

Bid Content
After the notification of intent, the steering board chair will share
with you more details, including successful bids from previous years.
The following questions have to be answered for the official bid (both
draft and final proposals). Text in square brackets [] contains
considerations to be taken into account.

1.     Describe briefly the conference, including side events
2.     Describe briefly the conference site.
3.     What date do you consider?
4.     What is the nearest (international) airport?
5.     Please give price quotes for the cheapest roundtrip to the
conference location from Frankfurt, London, New York, San Francisco,
Beijing and Tokyo (assume one week of travel with a Saturday overnight
stay)
6.     What transportation should participants use from the airport to
the conference site?
7.     Are there any visa-related issues we should know about (in
particular, are there any countries for which the visa requirements
are different, and conference attendance will be more difficult for
some reason? )
8.     Does the conference site both have a large room for a maximum
of 300 people and about 5 smaller rooms for a maximum of 30-70 people?
Is there wireless connection available for attendees? What about
audio-visual facilities?
9.     What is the approximate room rate (single and double
occupancy)? Is breakfast included? [Often all the attendees of ICMI
stay at the same hotel. If this is your case, the conference chair
should find a hotel that allows accommodation for the expected number
of people. Booking rooms and meals in the same hotel as the conference
rooms often helps reducing the overall costs.]
10.  Catering, including breaks, receptions, banquet and
entertainment. We encourage organizers to provide coffee breaks and
lunches in order to promote community building and discussion.
11.  Which support can your department give for the organization of
the conference (e.g., free secretarial assistance, facilities for
on-line payment?
12.  Which support can your department give during the conference
(e.g., free secretarial assistance, PCs / Macs at the conference
site)?
13.  What are your plans for sponsorship? To which associations /
companies / institutions do you plan to apply for financial
assistance? What do you realistically expect to receive from them?
What are your plans concerning student travel stipend program [A
minimum of $5,000 should be reserved from each year's conference
budget to support student travel from each of the three major
geographic regions (Americas, Europe-Africa, Asia-Pacific), or $15,000
total. For example, if a grant for $15,000 is obtained from NSF to
support U.S. student travel but there is no external funding for
students from other continents, then an additional $10,000 of you
budget should be set aside for students from the other two continents]
14.  What actions will you take to make the conference cheaper for
students? (e.g., seek financial support from other organizations,
provide cheaper rooms)? What reduction do you realistically expect?
15.  Provide the names of people who are foreseen or confirmed for the
major Conference Committees: General Chairs, Program Chairs,
Sponsorship Chair; volunteer labor, registration handling. One of the
General Chairs and one of the Program Chairs should be identified as
the lead, who will be the main point of contact for the ICMI steering
committee. Describe any experience the team has had in organizing
previous conferences and the number of participants at those
conferences.
16.  Local Multimodal Interaction community
17.  How do you propose to run the paper reviewing process? Do you see
any possible improvements?
18.  How will you organize the content of the conference to ensure a
high-quality and energetic exchange of information that includes
timely topics and stimulating external speakers? Please be specific in
your suggestions for how you would organize the main program and
workshops/tutorials
19.  Any other aspects that you may find relevant for the evaluation
of your proposal

Preparing a budget proposal
Based on estimates from previous attendance, one might expect 250
participants to ICMI. Please, provide three budgets, one for 150
participants, a second for 200 participants and the last one for 250,
considering reasonable physical/virtual attendance division. Costs
that will have to be covered include:
·       Rental of conference space and meeting rooms
·       AV equipment
·       Coffee breaks and possibly lunch
·       Registration desk/technical helpers (e.g., student volunteers)
·       Tutorials
·       Producing and printing the proceedings (in 2022, this was
around 9K-10K euros for main + adjunct proceedings)
·       10% ACM fee
·       15% contingency fund
·       Conference poster and advertising
·       Social banquet
·       Welcome reception
·       Lunch for ICMI steering board meeting

See https://www.acm.org/special-interest-groups/volunteer-resources/conference-planning/section-1-establishing-an-acm-event
for more information about preparing a budget for ACM conferences.