General Guidelines: A Workshop can be full-day (8 hours) or half-day (4 hours). Generally a full-day workshop will have a recommended number of 8 speakers: 4 morning speakers and 4 afternoon speakers. Speakers should be from diversely represented institutions and well-known contributors in their field and must have excellent English presentation skills. There will be two 20-min breaks, one midway each half day. The length and timing of the talks is at the discretion of the workshop organizers.

For a Participatory Workshop, at least 25% of the time should be allocated for interaction with and by the attendees. Question and answer panels are encouraged. Inviting attendees to come to the podium and present relevant information is strongly encouraged. In terms of interactivity, a good Participatory Workshop should more closely resemble an extended Rump Session than an extended Focus Session.

An Educational Workshop is intended to bring experts together to explore a narrow theme in depth, and make it accessible to the non-expert. It includes some introductory material to bring non-experts up to speed. It is not a Short Course, which is entirely instructional. In an Educational Workshop, the first lectures should "set the table" for the session, bringing common terms of art to the non-expert and defining the problem at hand so that the session may proceed to an exploration of the contemporary issues. In an Educational Workshop, the 25% time devoted to participation may be adjusted if appropriate for the topic, but interaction must still be encouraged.

Neither Participatory Workshops nor Educational Workshops should resemble the regular podium-presented Technical Sessions, which are limited by time in audience interaction and are entirely restricted to new unpublished work. Rather they should be structured by the organizer to allow for exploration and variation. The moderator should rarely, and hopefully never, choose to say "there is only time for one short question" and bring closure to a discussion, thereby defeating the workshop purpose.

Specific questions can be submitted via email to the Workshop Chair, workshops@ims2011.org.

Proposal Submission Instructions:

1. Download the MSWord Workshop Proposal form.
2. Complete the first section including contact information, justification, and abstract. Ideally the organizer should indicate two or more IMS Technical Areas for review purposes. In the second section, organizers must include speaker information and abstracts from the speakers.
3. Convert the form to a PDF format for submission on the website. The deadline for preliminary proposals is September 17, 2010.

Workshop Selection Criteria: All submissions must be in English. The IMS2011Workshop Committee will review the proposals in consultation with the MTT-S Technical Committees and other experts in the field. The selection criteria and their weights are as follows:

• Technical Content (25%): Does the Workshop contain new technology or state-of-the-art results? Does the it address a rapidly evolving technical area? Does it present new and innovative ideas to the attendees?
• Quality (25%): Are the speakers recognized authorities in their field? Has their participation been confirmed? Is it well organized with a coherent theme? Is the number of speakers appropriate for the time allocation?
• Interactivity (25%): Is a plan to ensure active attendee participation well articulated, particularly for Participatory workshops? Interaction between the speakers and the attendees is crucial to a good Workshop and is what distinguishes them from the Technical Sessions. Such attendee participation must not be limited to short question and answer sessions at the end of each talk.
• Interest to IMS attendees (25%): Is this Workshop different from previous Workshops? Is it relevant to today's microwave engineers? Have the organizers indicated clearly why it will enhance IMS2011?

IMS Technical Areas and MTT-S Technical Committees: For a list of IMS Technical Areas please consult the technical areas page. In many cases there is an MTT-S Technical Committee (www.mtt.org) with expertise in these Technical Areas. If the subject of the proposed Workshop fits within one or more of these Technical Committees, prospective Workshop organizers are strongly encouraged to contact the MTT-S Technical Committees for possible sponsorship. They should also review previous IMS workshops to avoid duplication and to get a general idea of workshop organization and style. A description of recent IMS workshops can be found at each of the active legacy IMS websites: www.ims2010.org, www.ims2009.org, www.ims2008.org, and www.ims2007.org.

Workshop Review Process: Workshop proposals will be submitted and reviewed in a two-tier process employing a preliminary and a final proposal. Workshop preliminary proposals should be as complete as possible, including the organizers' affiliations and contact information, Workshop abstract, justification of why the topic should be a Workshop, a list of speakers, and a well-articulated plan to ensure audience participation. The IMS2011 Workshop Committee will rely on experts drawn from the MTT-S Technical Committees and elsewhere to provide a preliminary recommendation. Overlapping workshops will be combined and poorly targeted workshops will be eliminated or revised at this preliminary stage. Organizers receiving preliminary acceptance must then submit a Workshop final proposal (use the same form) which includes an abstract from each speaker and 100% speaker confirmation. Workshops will be reviewed for final disposition at this second stage. Reviews will be carried out by the relevant MTT-S Technical Committees or by an ad-hoc Review Committee if the topic is outside the scope of a Technical Committee. Workshop organizers are encouraged to recommend members to serve on these ad-hoc committees.

Notification/Notes Submission: Workshop organizers will be notified by email of the final disposition decision by December 20, 2010. Refer to the website for detailed instructions on preparing Workshop Notes for publication. Workshop Notes must be submitted by March 18, 2011 as PDF files, one slide per page in color for the CD-ROM and two slides per page for the hardcopy B&W notes. Workshop speakers are responsible for formatting the notes. All fonts must be embedded in PDF files.

Workshop Fees: Workshop fees will be waived for Workshop speakers who submit notes on time and Workshop organizers who meet all deadlines.

Clearances: It is the Workshop speaker's responsibility to obtain all required company and government clearances prior to submitting Notes. Speakers submitting Notes must verify that such clearances have been obtained and agree to the distribution of submitted Notes to workshop attendees. Details on the note submission process will be available through the notes submission website link at ims2011.mtt.org.