RecSys 2008

We are pleased to invite you to participate in this premier annual event on research and applications of recommender technologies. Recommender systems are software applications that aim to support users in their decision-making while interacting with large information spaces. They recommend items of interest to users based on preferences they have expressed, either explicitly or implicitly. The ever-expanding volume and increasing complexity of information on the Web has therefore made such systems essential tools for users in a variety of information seeking or e-commerce activities. Recommender systems help overcome the information overload problem by exposing users to the most interesting items, and by offering novelty, surprise, and relevance. Major e-commerce sites such as Amazon and Yahoo are using recommendation technology in ubiquitous ways. Many new-comers are on their way and entrepreneurs are competing in order to find the right approach to use this technology effectively. Some say that recommendation technology represents the new paradigm in search: interesting items find the user instead of the user explicitly searching for them. In an article published in CNN Money, entitled "The race to create a smart Google", Fortune magazine writer Jeffrey

O'Brien, writes:

"The Web, they say, is leaving the era of search and entering one of discovery. What's the difference? Search is what you do when you're looking for something. Discovery is when something wonderful that you didn't know existed, or didn't know how to ask for, finds you."

The 2nd ACM International Conference on Recommender Systems, builds on the success of the Recommenders06 School in Bilbao, Spain; and the 1st International Conference in Minneapolis, USA. In these events many members of the practitioner and research communities valued the rich sharing of ideas made possible by the shared plenary sessions. The 2nd International conference will combine the same close interaction among practitioners and researchers with a fully refereed published collection of papers. The proceedings, which are available both as a bound volume and via the ACM Digital Library, are expected to be widely read and cited.

In addition to a regular technical program, there will be tutorials covering the state-of-the-art of this domain, a doctoral consortium, and an industrial program comprising of panel discussions and a practice/industry-paper track. We also expect to have one keynote speaker who will address the major applications of recommendation technologies in industry.

Additional Information will be available at: http://hci.epfl.ch/recsys08/

SPONSORING THE CONFERENCE

The success of this conference depends on your generous support. EPFL Lausanne has taken the lead in sponsoring this conference. Please contact us if you would like to pledge your sponsorship. More details can be found at: http://hci.epfl.ch/recsys08/ As an official sponsor of Recommenders Systems 2008, you will have the opportunity to reach a unique audience composed of leading researchers in the dynamic field of Recommender Systems. We highly encourage potential sponsors to contact us. More details about the different forms of sponsorship can be found here.

IMPORTANT DATES

Paper submission deadline: May 18, 2008

Author Notification: To be announced

Conference Date: October 23-25, 2008

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

Pearl Pu, General Chair, Ecole Polytechnique FÈdÈrale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland

Bamshad Mobasher, Program Co-Chair, DePaul University, USA

Francesco Ricci, Program Co-Chair, Free University Bozen-Bolzano, Italy

Derek Bridge, Short Papers Chair, University College Cork, Ireland

Francisco Martin, Industry Program Co-Chair, Mystrands, Inc.

Shail Patel, Industry Program Co-Chair, Unilever UK

Lorraine McGinty, Publicity Chair, UCD Dublin, Ireland

Yuan Chun Shi, Asia Liaison, Tsinghua University, China