The International Systems and Software Product Line Conference (SPLC) is the premier forum for practitioners, researchers and educators to present and discuss the most recent ideas, innovations, trends, experiences, and concerns in the area of software product lines, software product family engineering and, more in general, systems family engineering. SPLC 2016 will be the 20th meeting of the product line community and will be held during September 19 to 23, 2016, in Beijing, China.

We invite you to submit proposals for one or two day’s workshops in the field of system and software product lines. In particular workshops on challenging, emerging areas related to the conference topics are sought. We particularly encourage proposals for highly interactive and collaborative workshops, rather than mini-conferences. Workshops usually take place on the first and second day of the conference, thus, September 19 and 20, 2016.

SPLC workshop papers will be published in volume 2 of the SPLC conference proceedings published by ACM. Moreover, a one-page summary of each accepted workshop will be published in volume 1.

Workshop proposals should be authored by at least two organizers, preferably from different institutions, and they should contain the following three sections:

1. Organizers

• Name: organizers' full names
• Contact information: affiliations, job titles, postal addresses, e-mail addresses, URLs, and phone
• Brief biography: 100-200 words, focusing on the organizers' expertise in the field and experience as workshop organizers
• Primary contact: identify one organizer as the primary contact

2. Workshop content

• Title: workshop title and acronym
• Abstract: max 150 words describing the workshop, suitable for the conference's website and the advance program (the shorter the better)
• Topics and motivation:
  • What are the topics, themes, and areas of interest of the workshop?
  • How is the workshop relevant to SPLC?
  • How does the workshop connect SPLC to other research communities?
  • Goals and expected results:
  • Explicitly state the goals of the workshop and how you intend to reach them
  • What are the expected results of the workshop?
  • How will these results be disseminated?
• Format:
  • What is the planned workshop format (paper presentations, working sessions, etc.)?
  • What will be done to stimulate collaborative interaction?
  • What are the planned pre- and post-workshop activities?
  • What are the planned pre- and post-workshop activities?
• Participants: List a preliminary program committee (if applicable)
  • What is the expected number of participants? Provide a plan for attracting submissions and promoting attendance
  • Explain how this workshop will attract a sufficient number of attendees
  • If applicable, specify the participant selection process
• Previous workshops:
  • Have there been previous workshops on the same or a closely related topic?
  • When, where and with how many participants?
  • Required equipment: Overhead projector, PC projector, whiteboard, flip charts, microphone, etc.

3. Preliminary Call for Papers

This will necessarily repeat some of the information from the previous sections, but should be targeted towards prospective participants.

The workshop call for papers should address the following items:

• Overview of the motivation, topics, and goals
• Workshop format
• Deadlines of the workshop (see dates in this call for proposals)
• Submission guidelines and review process
• References to previous workshops (websites)

4. Submission

The deadline for workshop proposal submissions is February 22, 2016

Please send your workshop proposals using EasyChair (login as author to: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=splc2016 and select the track “Workshops”). Proposals must be submitted in PDF format. Relevant supporting material, such as proceedings from previous offerings of the proposed workshop or other workshops run by the proposal authors, should be included if available but are not required for submission. A workshop proposal must be at most 3 pages. Each workshop proposal will be evaluated according to the relevance of its topic, the expertise and experience of the workshop organizers, and the workshop's potential for attracting participants and generating useful results. We underline the importance of active and creative workshops that foster a collaborative environment of interest to both practitioners and researchers, aiming, e.g., to evolve the field of software product lines and to identify elements of joint future work.

Acceptance Criteria

To obtain a balanced and cohesive workshop program, the Organizing Committee will collaborate closely with workshop organizers and reserves the right to circulate proposals to other submitters in view of possible workshop mergers. The organizers of accepted workshops will be required to create and maintain a Web site in a timely manner to serve as a workshop information center and to provide a repository for documenting pre- and post-workshop activities.

If accepted, the following deadlines are set by the SPLC organization:

• Call for Papers and workshop website (incl. finalized PC): March 15, 2016
• Paper submissions: May 15, 2016
• Paper notifications: June 15, 2016
• Final version of papers (hard deadline): June 30, 2016

Further enquiries can be made to the workshop chairs:

Andrzej Wąsowski (wasowski (at) itu.dk)

Xin Peng (pengxin (at) fudan.edu.cn)