Blocks and Beyond 2
2nd Workshop on Lessons and Directions for First Programming Environments
A VL/HCC 2017 workshop in Raleigh, NC, USA, Oct. 10, 2017
The sequel to the 1st Blocks and Beyond Workshop (Oct, 2015)

Instructions for Final Submission of Demo/Poster Summaries

You need to do two things to complete the final submission of your Blocks & Beyond Demo/Poster Summary:

  1. By the end of day on Tuesday, October 31, 2017, you must submit your final 2-page demo/poster summary to the PDF eXpress Plus system. The PDF eXpress Plus account for our workshop closes on Wed. Nov. 1, so this step is very important..
  2. By the end of day on Friday, November 3, 2017, you must submit your IEEE copyright form.

Submit Your Final PDF to PDF eXpress Plus

This must be completed by the end of Tuesday, October 31, 2017. Follow these steps:

  1. Revise Your Submission:

    Revise your submission to address any comments you have received from Lyn.

  2. Format Your Paper

    All submissions must be created using the 8.5" x 11" (US Letter), Two-Column Format template (LaTeX or MS Word) provided at the IEEE author site:

    http://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/publishing/templates.html

    If you use the LaTeX template, use the following \documentclass declaration; do *not* use the compsoc option.

    \documentclass[conference]{IEEEtran}

    You have a 2-page limit on your summary document.

    If you added page numbers to your original submission, please remove them from your camera-ready version.

    Note on copyright footer: The IEEE paper submission FAQ says ``A copyright footer must be applied to the paper prior to uploading manuscript to PDF eXpress." However, you do not need to add such a footer in your workshop paper. We will add this footer (with the appropriate ISBN number) when we assemble the papers into a proceedings.

  3. Create/validate your submission PDF

    All camera-ready submissions must be PDF documents that have been validated using IEEE's PDF eXpress Plus tool. You can choose either to let PDF eXpress Plus create your final PDF from source or you can validate a PDF you have created yourself. Only papers that pass validation by PDF eXpress Plus are accepted by the IEEE Xplore digital library.

    1. Begin by visiting the PDF eXpress Plus site at:
      http://www.pdf-express.org/plus
      • If you've visited this site before, log in with Conference ID 43120XP and go to step 3c.
      • If this is your first visit to the site, click on the link "New Users - Click Here" and fill in your information. You will need the Conference ID, which is
        43120XP

        You will also need to specify a password for this particular conference ID.

        Click "Submit" when done and go to Step 3b.

    2. On the Create Account Page, fill in any missing information, click "Submit" when done, and then click "Continue".

    3. On the Home -- Title Status page, click "Create New Title" and enter some version of the title for your paper. (The title is not official in any way; it is only used by you to distinguish submissions if you have more than one). Click "Submit File for Checking or Converting"

    4. On the Upload File page, either (1) choose a PDF file to validate or (2) choose a source file to convert to PDF (e.g. .doc/.docx). Then click "Upload File" and read the message on the resulting page.

      Soon, you should receive an email from the system reporting the status of the validation/conversion.

      • If the validation/conversion is successful, the email will say so, but will not include the validated/converted PDF file as an attachment. To see the validated/converted PDF file, go to step 3e.
      • If the validation/conversion is unsuccessful, the email will give hints on how to fix the problem. Go to step 3e and try again. If you have problem validating a PDF file you saved from a .doc/.docx file, you might instead try using PDF eXpress Plus to convert the .doc/.docx file directly.

    5. Click "Continue" to return to the Home -- Title Status page. This page shows the status of your paper(s). On this page you can:

      • Click on a title to view the validated/converted PDF associated with that title.
      • Click on "Try Again" to retry validation/conversion for a paper
      • Click "Refresh File Status" to refresh the page.

  4. Upload your final submission to PDF Express Plus

    This step must be completed by the end of day on Tuesday, October 31, 2017.

    For the B&B 2017 workshop, you will use PDF eXpress Plus (not EasyChair) to upload the final version of your submission.

    1. In PDF eXpress Plus, go to the Home -- Title Status page.

    2. Click on the "Approve for Collection" link for the title you wish to submit.

    3. On the resulting page, labeled IEEE PDF eXpress, you will be able to change the default File Name for your PDF file. Please ignore the advice on that page, and name your file using the following convention:
      lastNameOfPresentingAuthor-firstTitleWord-secondTitleWord

      E.g., presenting author Phil E. Buster of paper "Time Consuming Blocks" would use the filename Buster-Time-Consuming.pdf

    4. Click "Approve File for Collection" to submit your final version.

    Submit Your IEEE Copyright Form

    This step must be completed by the end of Friday, November 3, 2017.

    The IEEE copyright form is electronic. Go to the Blocks and Beyond 2017 Copyright page to start the proces of submitting your IEEE copyright form.

    Unfortunately, the IEEE electronic form was very flakey for the submission of copyright forms for full papers and position statements. Please let Lyn know if you encounter any issues with the form. Previously, the form would sometimes hang near the final step. About half the authors experience this problem while the other half did not.