Interesting CfP & conference management systems - PAPIsdotio/cfp-app GitHub Wiki

SaaS:

  • Easychair - free, or £90 license for features such as customizing form fields or adding file upload field
    • Critical feedback:
      • There seems to be no way to ask for extended abstract
      • Quite a few configuration options. But more complex than what we need. Harder to navigate (couldn’t find the customization options I was looking for…)
      • Can’t have tracks as required dropdown menu, instead of optional checkboxes?
      • This is weird, in the submission form: “The following part of the submission form was added by PAPIs18. It has neither been checked nor endorsed by EasyChair”
      • The interface for someone wanting to submit isn’t great…
    • Good:
      • There’s a plugin to organize a call for volunteers, including reviewers, etc., and process these applications
      • Ability to email PC members
  • Dryfta - $229 per month
  • Aconf ("Academic Conference Professional") - complete conference solution (too many features)
  • Papercall - $500 per event
    • Can’t customize form, its items, labels and descriptions
    • “Talk Format” and “Audience Level” are pretty cool
    • “Elevator pitch” is the “abstract”
    • “Description” is the extended abstract
    • “Audience Level” doesn’t seem customizable
    • “Talk Format” wasn’t available in the cfp-app, and it’s useful to specify a track! But limited to 4 items
    • Not possible to specify gender, ethnicity, country
    • There’s some customizable text in the submission form
    • Shows submissions that need rating
    • Reviewing interface is clearer
    • Inviting reviewers should be easier - including Francisco!
    • Alex Casalboni is already familiar with it
    • No difference between reviewer and organizer?
    • Can you rate your own proposal?
    • No soft decisions?

Open source:

  • http://read.seas.harvard.edu/~kohler/hotcrp/
  • https://github.com/nicmarti/cfp-devoxx/
    • Clever Cloud can offer hosting and set up in exchange for sponsorship (logo... maybe something else?)
    • steps for set-up:
      • Change conf name
      • Deactivate or configure social logins
  • https://github.com/cfpio/callForPapers/
  • https://github.com/HaughtCodeworks/cfp-app:
    • The authors of the cfp-app we're currently using (from RubyCentral) made significant changes to it — and they are so significant that they moved it to that new repo. What's interesting is that HaughtCodeworks is a web dev agency, so we can hire them for customizations of the app if we can't do them ourselves...
    • We are already familiar with the app, so there is less uncertainty that this will work for us, and it will be easier to use
    • It's used by industry and tech conferences, which are close to us in the way they are run
  • cfp.io:
    • blind reviews not possible
    • tracks and formats (with duration) can be customized
    • no public comment feature
    • change “call for papers” to “call for proposals”
    • how can we submit a paper? (i.e. a PDF… give an example from our proceedings)
    • need somewhere to give additional details