Improving Scientific Conferences by Enhancing Conference Management Systems with Information Mining Capabilities

In this paper we identify tasks in the field of conference management where methods from the domain of information retrieval, information management and information organization can assist the organizer, the program committee member and the participants. In particular, we focus on tasks, where (1) the quality of the conference can be increased by assisting in the creation of an improved review process by better matching the reviewers expertise with the paper topics, (2) the conference participants profit by allowing them better access to the wealth of information accumulated throughout a conference series and at the same time (3) reducing the workload of conference organizer by partially automating tedious tasks, such as review assignment and the creation of review plans. We report on case studies from a medium-sized (around 400 participants) as well as a large (more than 700 participants) conference in computer science as well as in medical domains.