AnalytiCup - Call for Proposals

Theme: From Big Data and Big Information to Big Knowledge

Topics of Interest

We invite industrial, government, and academic organizations to submit proposals to organize a Challenge for the 2018 Conference on Information and Knowledge and Management (CIKM). CIKM is a premier international forum for presentation and discussion of research on information and knowledge management, and the CIKM AnalytiCup Challenges are analytics and programming contests based on datasets released by the organizations sponsoring the contest. These contests will run for several months, with winners announced and rewarded in October 2018 at the CIKM conference in Turin.

Strong proposals will release interesting and novel datasets to the participants and propose tasks that are challenging, yet achievable within the expected timeline. To encourage broad participation in the challenge competition, tasks and data should be made publicly accessible where possible. We will accept at most one challenge for each sector of interest.

Sectors of interest include but are not limited to:

• Mobility
• Health and wellness
• Finance
• Advanced manufacturing
• Retail and e-commerce
• Smart cities and urban systems
• Social and web user profiling/recommendation

Specific and Open Task Challenges

Specific Task Challenges involve a released dataset and a well-defined problem with clear evaluation metrics (e.g., accuracy, execution time). Specific Tasks run on a data competition platform (e.g., Kaggle) that maintains a leaderboard for the participants. After the final submission due date, the 10 semi-finalists are selected based on their standing on the leaderboard, and must then submit a 4-page report describing their algorithms and results. The 3 finalists and their placements are selected based on their standing on the leaderboard and the quality of their algorithms by an evaluation commission.

Open Task Challenges involve a released dataset and two rounds of competition. In the first round, participating teams propose tasks by submitting a 500-word abstract. Teams selected in the first round are invited to submit an implementation or a demonstration of their respective proposed tasks in the second round. The winners are selected by the organization supporting the challenge and a program committee of experts based on the novelty and usefulness of the proposed tasks in the context of the competition.

AnalytiCup Proposal Format

Proposals should answer the following questions:

• Who are the organizers? Provide your names, affiliations, contact information, and brief bio of the organizers.
• Which sector does the proposed AnalytCup Challenge belong to?
• What is the dataset to be released? Remember to address privacy concerns regarding the released data.
• What prizes will be offered?
• What is the maximum size of each team? We suggest up to 4 members per team.
• Do you require source code with submissions?

For specific-task challenges:

• What are the task and the evaluation metrics?
• What competition infrastructure will be used?

For open-task challenges:

• What are the criteria for assessing the quality of submissions?
• What are the expected formats of the second-round submissions (e.g., demo, slides, poster)?
• Identify an individual representing the organization who can participate in evaluating submissions together with the Data Challenge Co-Chairs.