SIGBOVIK (Special Interest Group on Harry Qatar Bovik) is an annual multidisciplinary conference specializing in lesser-known areas of academic research such as Sticky-Finger Manipulation, Natural Intelligence, and Retroactive Data.

SIGBOVIK 2021 is the fifteenth edition of this esteemed conference series, which was formed in 2007 to celebrate the inestimable and variegated work of Harry Queen-o'-the-prairie Bovik. We especially welcome the three neglected quadrants of research: joke realizations of joke ideas, joke realizations of serious ideas, and serious realizations of joke ideas. (In other words: SIGBOVIK is an evening of tongue-in-cheek academic presentations, a venue for silly ideas and/or executions.)

The proceedings are available online (PDF) and on Lulu (paperback). They will not also be available for purchase at the conference, unless one considers a link to lulu on the streaming site to be "at the conferece". We might do a bulk order of physical proceedings for local purchase if it becomes safe to do so in the near future. Or we might not. That does sound like work.

Due to social distancing recommendations in the face of COVID-19, SIGBOVIK will not be held in Rashid Auditorium this year. Instead, we be relocating to the most socially distant place of all: the internet. That's right, on April 1 at 6pm EDT, you will be able to enjoy SIGBOVIK 2021 from the comfort of your [insert isolated location here].

Note: SIGBOVIK 2021 has been postponed from 5pm EDT to 6pm EDT. It will be livestreamed on our Twitch channel.

SIGBOVIK accepts papers, presentations, and reviews. (Feel free to submit a paper without a presentation, a review without a papaer, or any combination you like!) Take a look at past proceedings, available at sigbovik.org, to get an idea of what is typically submitted.

Papers: The submission deadline is March 12, 2021 March 19, 2021 March 26, 2021 on EasyChair. To simplify the proceedings-ification process, we ask that submissions not contain page numbers. (If you use LaTeX, try \usepackage{nopageno}) If you experience any difficulties submitting, please contact us.

Presentations: In light of this year's virtual venue, all talks this year will be pre-recorded videos. Presenters are also required to submit audio responses to questions from the audience, from which the hosts will blindly select one to play. Our very well supported findings show five to be a good number for unbiased answers, and two to be the bare minimum.

Presentations should be no more than five minutes in length; any presentations that try to skirt above this limit with be agressively forced into five minute format. Please submit your talks (preferrably in H.264 or OGG format) using The Highly Sophisticated Amazingly Serious Blind Talk Submission Form. All talks must be submitted by March 28, 2021. Presenters are invited to register their talks early, and they are welcome to edit their submitted talk until this date. As always, please contact us if you have any difficulties or questions related to the submission process.

Reviews: To submit your triple blind review, download The Official Incredibly Secure Extra Blind SIGBOVIK Review Template (in LaTeX). After filling out review-template.tex, send just your edited review-template.tex to sigbovik-reviews@lists.andrew.cmu.edu (the included .cls file is just so you can see the compiled result). If you are displeased by the lack of templates for alternate document preparation systems, you may send your own Incredibly Secure Extra Blind SIGBOVIK Review Template (in Something Else) to the organizers.

Stay up to date by subscribing to our very-low-volume mailing list. If you have any questions, you can contact the organizers at sigbovik@gmail.com.