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\lhead{\sc IACR Guidelines for the Real World Cryptography Symposium}
\rhead{\sc \lastupdate}

\title{\bf IACR Guidelines for the Real World Cryptography Symposium}
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\date{\lastupdate
 \footnote{The most recent version of this document
    can be obtained from \protect\url{http://www.iacr.org/docs/}}}

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\par\noindent
The purpose of this document is to help the Steering Committee of 
the Real World Cryptography (RWC) Symposium and the RWC
General Chair run a successful symposium, and to help in managing 
the IACR finances and membership. 

The RWC Symposium is organized by the IACR according to the Bylaws of the
organization in a way that is similar to the IACR Conferences, but
with notable differences.  The RWC Steering Committee 
oversees the organization of RWC.

The guidelines evolved mainly from the procedures that
seemed to work well for past organizers.  For the most
part, guidelines are not meant to be rigid but rather formulas that
will help make things work; only a limited number of rules is listed
in this document.  Such rules can usually be recognized by the
imperative ``must.''

If you are the General Chair of RWC then you must accept these rules and follow the
guidelines.  If you feel that you are unable or unwilling to do so, or
if you desire modifications be made from these guidelines, please
contact the IACR Board of Directors or the RWC Steering Committee beforehand.

At various points this document will refer to specific sections of other
IACR guidelines. These sections are assumed to be included {\em verbatim}
into this document; they are not included explicitly to avoid duplication
of information.  It will be {\em explicitly} stated where RWC
differs from other guidelines of the IACR.

This document will continue to evolve.  Please send your feedback and
suggestions for improvement to the IACR Officers, the
IACR Board of Directors, and to the RWC Steering Committee.

\begin{flushright}\it
Nigel Smart (2017).
\end{flushright}

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\tableofcontents

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\section{Real World Cryptography Steering Committee Bylaws}
RWC mission statement:
\begin{center}
    {\em To be the top-tier forum for discussion of the research and practice of applied 
cryptography, to build a strong applied cryptography community, and 
improve the security of computing in practice.}
\end{center}

The RWC Steering Committee (from now on simply, the Committee) is a group of volunteers 
that oversee organization of the annual Real World Cryptography Symposium. 
Committee member responsibilities include:
\begin{itemize}
\item Finding locations and local organizers
\item Deciding the format of the conference:  percentage of invited vs. contributed talks and archival format (proceedings, recorded videos)
\item Identifying, discussing, and ultimately sending invitations to potential speakers
\item Identifying sponsorship opportunities and pursuing them
\item Selecting Levchin prize award winners
\item Managing relationships with other bodies
\item Maintaining the website at \url{https://rwc.iacr.org/} in collaboration
  with the IACR webmaster
\end{itemize}
All decisions are made by reaching consensus, or, if necessary, by plurality vote 
of Committee members. Any Committee member can request a vote.

Contributed talks are ``light-touch'' reviewed by a separate program committee 
consisting of six invited reviewers, plus five members of the RWC Steering Committee. 
The chair of the program committee is selected by the Committee
and approved by the IACR Board of Directors. The appointment is for a
term of three years (with possibility for renewal).
The primary criterion for invited talks is that the talk should be interesting 
to the RWC audience. Strong academic research results have other venues 
(IACR General Conferences and Area Conferences) and product descriptions also have other 
venues (RSA Conference etc).
For more details see Section \ref{sec:PCGuidelines}.

The organizational goal is to have the Committee consist of at least 5 and at 
most 9 members, a majority of whom should be research active. 
Ideally, each Committee member serves a 3 year term, at the conclusion of 
which the member steps down and is replaced by a new member. 
Achieving this in the short term is likely to be problematic as all 
Committee members are new. New members are appointed by invitation of 
the existing Committee. 
There are no term limits, meaning that someone can be re-invited back to 
the Committee, though this case should be exceptional.  

The founding members of the RWC Steering Committee (Dan Boneh, Aggelos
 Kiayias, Kenny Paterson, Tom Ristenpart, Tom Shrimpton, Nigel Smart) are 
currently exempt from the requirement to step down after 3 years, 
for not creating too much churn early on. 
The plan is to phase the founding members out more slowly over time.  
New members of the Committee are expected to have expertise (industrial 
or academic) in cryptography, a wide network of contacts in the community,
shared vision in the mission of RWC, and good rapport with existing Committee members. 

The Committee currently (2017) consists of: Dan Boneh, Aggelos Kiayias, 
Brian LaMacchia, Kenny Paterson, Tom Ristenpart, Tom Shrimpton and Nigel Smart. 
The current chair of the program committee is Dan Boneh (2018-2021).


\section{Organizing the RWC Symposium}

Include verbatim Section 1 (``Organizing an IACR Workshop or Conference'') of the IACR General Chair guidelines.

In particular, the final authority for approving a symposium proposal resides
with the IACR Board of Directors.


\section{Timetable}
\label{sec:timetable}

The following timetable shows when key tasks should be completed.  All
times are in months from time T of the symposium. 
This timeline is specific for RWC.

\begin{description}

\item[T--18] A proposal by the General Chair for dates, venue, 
  organizing committee, and a preliminary budget should be sent 
  to the Committee.

\item[T--13] The proposal will be selected by the Committee and 
  approved by the Board.

\item[T--12] Confirm the meeting place as soon as the Board has
  approved your proposal.  If this requires payment of a deposit, set
  up a bank account and obtain seed money from the IACR Treasurer.

\item[T--11] 
  Select a local organizing committee (Section~\ref{ssec:orgcomm}).
  Refine the budget (Section~\ref{sec:budget}) and approach
  potential sponsors for your event (Section~\ref{sec:sponsors}).
  For RWC sponsorship is vital, and you need to be pro-active in going
  out, finding, and contacting sponsors. Waiting for them to come to
  you is not the way to do it.

\item[T--9] Coordinate with the IACR webmaster and the Committee about 
  how to host the symposium website (see Section~\ref{sec:publ}).

\item[T--7] Finalize the budget, set a registration fee, and send the
  detailed budget to IACR President and Treasurer for immediate review and
  final approval (Section~\ref{sec:budget}).  You must have an
  approved budget before registration can be opened. To set a low
  registration fee you should have collected, or be in the process
  of collecting most of the sponsorship by now; and hence have a
  good idea of the final figure.

  Inquire into obtaining insurance for the event.

\item[T--6] Arrange and announce the registration method.  You must use the
  IACR's own online conference registration system, which also handles
  credit-card payments and is integrated with the IACR membership database.
  Since all participants of IACR conferences and symposia are entitled to
  become members of IACR, using the IACR system ensures that attendee
  information is recorded in the membership database automatically
  (Section~\ref{sec:registration}).

  The possibility for registering early at a standard fee should be
  available for at least 2 weeks after the announcement of the final
  program.  The deadline for early registration has typically been
  about one month before the event; careful choice of this date
  allows you to plan ahead.

  Announce the symposium on the website, to the IACR
  membership by email, and open the registration 
  (Section~\ref{ssec:announce}).  

  If not already done, set up a bank account. Usually if you 
  are based at a university this can be set up within your local
  finance system at the university.

\item[T--2] Coordinate the schedule with the program chair
  and the Committee.

\item[T--1] Take care of all major things to organize, like meals, coffee
  breaks, reception, audio-visual equipment, Internet
  access (Section~\ref{sec:major}), but also of minor things, like
  badges (Section~\ref{sec:minor}).

  Be prepared to send Letters of Invitation.

\item[T--2] Monitor registrations through the IACR web interface to 
  intercept fraudulent registrations, manage sponsoring and
  stipends.

  A few weeks prior to the event, you should send an email to all the
  registered participants with some basic information and a link to the updated
  website (program, venue, last minute changes).

\item[T--1] 
  At the discretion of the general chair registration fees can be increased 
   at this point in order to encourage people to register early and facilitate your planning.
  Experience has shown that about 80\%--90\% of the registrations come
  in before this deadline.

\item[T\ \ \ ] The RWC symposium takes place; see Section~\ref{sec:conference}.

\item[T+1] Coordinate with the IACR Membership Secretary and Treasurer
  for final attendees list, last minute registrations, refunds, address
  changes, etc.

\item[T+1] Start settling any outstanding financial details.

\item[T+5] Send the financial report and surplus funds to the Treasurer.
  Take a well-deserved rest.
\end{description}


\section{Proposal}
\label{sec:proposal}

This section explains how to prepare a proposal for
RWC.  Before you start making a detailed proposal, you should 
contact the Committee. 
You will get useful feedback on how to
proceed and on the deadline to submit your proposal.

\subsection{Venue}
The choice of a location involves several factors that should be
considered early in the process.
\begin{description}
\item[Accessibility:]  RWC draws participants from around
the world, and the location should be chosen with this in mind.  In the
event of a venue located far from an international airport or major
train station, convenient and frequent shuttle transportation should be
made available.  Other important questions are whether IACR members
from all countries can attend and whether you anticipate problems with visa.

\item[Meeting facility:] The location for lectures should be large
  enough to comfortably accommodate the expected number of
  participants. RWC has usually had around 500 participants.
  It is a clear
  policy of IACR that everybody who wants to come should be allowed
  to.  On the other hand, a meeting room that is too large will limit
  the effectiveness of presentations and inhibit interaction.  The
  room (or rooms) used for presentations should have at least one
  large raised screen.  Space for
  coffee breaks and lunches should be available nearby.  Generally
  meeting rooms at a university are more affordable than at hotels or
  conference centers.

  Consider any transportation problems between lodgings and meeting
  places.

\item[Lodging:] Point out lodging options of different types, ranging from
  first class (hotel) to one as cheap as possible (student dormitories
  or equivalent).
  Ideally,
  participants should be able to get from lodging to the lectures and
  back on their own and without much delay, i.e., on foot or at least
  by public transport that runs frequently. In the latter case, make
  precise information (also on how to get tickets) available in the
  map or in the individual hotels.

\item[Cost:] Many potential attendees at RWC have severely limited
  budgets for travel.  If the cost of attending the conference is too
  high, then many people will be unable to attend and the scientific
  program will suffer as a result. RWC aims to keep registration low
  by having a very high level of sponsorship. Note, that often
  it is participants from companies and not academia which have
  more restricted budgets; especially start-ups which are a key
  part of the RWC target audience.
\end{description}

For the proposal, investigate costs of lodging, meals,
meeting rooms, and local transportation.  It is strongly advised that
you visit the proposed venue.  Also make sure that facilities and
lodging will be available at the time desired.  Do all of this well in
advance and include a set of brochures, photos, fact sheets, 
etc.\ together with your proposal.

\subsection{Timing}

RWC is always in January.

\subsection{Organizing committee}
\label{ssec:orgcomm}

Include verbatim Section 3.3 of the IACR General Chair guidelines.

\subsection{Format of the proposal}

Include verbatim Section 3.4 of the IACR General Chair guidelines.
In particular, use the IACR \emph{conference budget planner}.

\section{Budget}
\label{sec:budget}

Include verbatim Section 4 of the IACR General Chair guidelines.

For RWC the budget for student stipends is usually between
20,000 and 40,000 US dollars. This is used to fund hotel
and travel for students who would otherwise not be able to
attend the event. Priority for this funding goes to students
from institutions who have less access to research funds.

\section{Sponsors}
\label{sec:sponsors}

Sponsoring is {\em the} major source of income for RWC.  
Sponsors like to get recognition by having their name attached with 
an item or to a recognizable part of the program.
However, providing an explicit service such as this for sponsorship can
count as a ``sales'' event; and hence can attract VAT in some
countries. 
Sponsorship for RWC is usually treated as a donation to the
running of the event; mainly to support student stipends to attend
the event.
Sponsors should be acknowledged at the event and on the website.

The Committee maintains strong links with sponsors for RWC.
To this end the Committee appoints a sponsorship secretary.
This secretary is responsible for coordinating requests for sponsorship
to the sponsors for previous years.
The General Chair is still responsible for finding additional sponsors to
reduce the overall costs for attendees. The General Chair and
the sponsorship secretary should work closely together in this respect.


\section{Publicity}
\label{sec:publ}

IACR maintains a website at \url{http://www.iacr.org/}. You can
send announcements by email to all IACR members, but you should limit
the number of email announcements sent to all members to two for each
event.

The primary way for communicating with attendees is online, through
the IACR website, the online IACR News system, the RWC website,
and other channels (e.g., social media).  The first step is to
list the event in the IACR calendar of events (members like to know
dates well in advance).  To do this, fill out a
web form at \url{http://www.iacr.org/events/}.

The RWC website is hosted on the IACR server
following a standard template. The Committee will be 
responsible for sorting out the website.

Once your basic website is set up, make sure that it is linked from the
calendar of events and publicize the Call for Contributed Talks.
Coordinate with the IACR Webmaster and Communications Secretary
to announce the symposium broadly and at the appropriate time.  

All communication regarding RWC  should clearly state that the meeting is sponsored by IACR by
including the phrase ``sponsored by the International Association for
Cryptologic Research.''  In addition, you should include the IACR logo
(available from the IACR website).  If other organizations are helping
with the meeting in some way, then you should include the phrases
``hosted by'' or ``in cooperation with'' for these organizations, but
not ``sponsored by.''

\subsection{Call for participation and other announcements}
\label{ssec:announce}

Include verbatim Section 6.2 of the IACR General Chair guidelines.


\section{Registration}
\label{sec:registration}

Include verbatim Section 7 of the IACR General Chair guidelines.

RWC does not foresee single-day attendance rates nor lower
registration fees for people with lesser financial means. The
reason being that RWC registration fees are generally quite low.
For the same reason RWC has traditionally not allowed refunds apart from
exceptional circumstances.  The student rate should be half the standard rate.

\subsection{Stipends}
\label{ssec:stipends}

As mentioned above RWC usually has a generous student 
stipend pot which is funded by the sponsors. 
This should be used to waive registration fees and to 
support lodging and transportation costs for students.

It is recommended that the General Chair process these
payments through the local organizing host organization.
For example if your ``bank account'' is a university,
then usually a university has a system for processing
expense claims for visitors. This should be used to
process the payment of student stipends. The reason
for this is that different countries have different
rules for accounting and tax status of expense
claims. In addition, paying stipends directly from the
IACR accounts is very complex; and thus this needs to
be processed locally.


\subsection{Integration into IACR membership}

Include verbatim Section 7.7 of the IACR General Chair guidelines.


\subsection{Registration confirmation}
\label{ssec:confirmation}

Include verbatim Section 7.8 of the IACR General Chair guidelines.

\section{Major Things to Plan}
\label{sec:major}

Include verbatim Section 8 of the IACR General Chair guidelines,
with the exclusion of Section~8.5 (proceedings) and 8.6 (excursion).

Note that RWC does not normally provide any evening meals
nor rump session, and that lunches are usually ``light'' sandwich-based
 lunches. This is to keep registration costs down. 
Sometimes a small drinks reception on the first day (or on
the evening before) is organized.

\section{Minor things to plan}
\label{sec:minor}

Include verbatim Section 9 of the IACR General Chair guidelines.
Exceptions: RWC does not usually have a souvenir nor a photo to reduce
cost; the list of attendees is available online to registered participants.

\section{At the event}
\label{sec:conference}

Include verbatim Section 10 of the IACR General Chair guidelines,

\section{Financial guidelines}
\label{sec:financial}

Include verbatim Section 12 of the IACR General Chair guidelines.


\section{Preparing the program}
\label{sec:PCGuidelines}
This section is aimed at the Committee and the program committee for 
a given year.

The RWC symposium lasts for three days and consists of talks;
about half of which are invited and half of which are contributed.
About half the talks should be from industry and about half from
the ``applied'' side of academia. The primary selection criteria
are that the talks should be of interest to the audience, and that
the speaker should be able to give a good exposition of their
material.

The invited talks are invited by the RWC Steering Committee, and
are usually either about interesting topics which have occurred during
the year, or from people in industry who the committee think
have something interesting to say.

Contributed talks are ``light-touch'' reviewed by a separate program committee 
consisting of six invited reviewers, plus six members of the RWC Steering Committee. 
The chair of the program committee is appointed by the RWC Steering Committee. 
Usually potential contributed talks are solicited via a ``Call for Contributions''
(the IACR {\em websubrev} system could be used for this). The ``paper'' being
a short outline (1-2 pages) of what the talk will be about.
The role of the program committee is to select the best such
proposals, bearing in mind the need to maintain a balanced 
and interesting program.

Strong academic research results have other venues (IACR General Conferences and
Area Conferences) and 
product descriptions also have other venues (RSA Conference etc).
Thus talks are selected primarily on the basis of whether the speaker
is going to give a good talk on something which the audience will
find interesting.

One can sensibly fit in around six hours of talks per full day,
assuming lengthy coffee and lunch breaks to facilitate discussions.
Thus one expects at most 36 half hour talks over three days. Hence, 
the goal is to obtain {\em at most} 18 contributed talks and {\em at most} 18
invited talks. Some talks will be given a little longer than
half an hour if the committee feel it is needed.

\section{Levchin Prize}
Two Levchin prizes are awarded each year. These are prizes in the
area of real-world cryptography, which have been kindly supported by
Max Levchin. 
Who receives these awards is at the sole discretion of the 
RWC Steering Committee.


\section{More information}
\label{app:contacts}

More information is available on the IACR website at
\url{http://www.iacr.org/}; browse the website and obtain information
about past conferences and workshops.  Do not hesitate to contact 
the members of the Committee and the Board for more information.

The current Committee is listed on the RWC website at
\url{https://rwc.iacr.org/}.

The current Board is listed on the IACR website at
\url{http://www.iacr.org/bod.html}. 


\end{document}
