Category: Events

If you are a scientist in #CS or #HCI, you probably have heard of Dagstuhl seminars at some point, often through their proceedings. If you’re curious about what they are, and the experience of attending a Dagstuhl seminar, here is my experience attending Seminar 23092 “A Human-Computer Interaction Perspective to Drive Change towards Sustainable Future” in February 2023 and co-organizing Seminar 23292 on SportsHCI in July 2023.

The mission of Schloss #Dagstuhl – Leibniz Center for Informatics is to “further world-class research in CS by facilitating communication and interaction between researchers”. It is done through their famous seminars at the castle, open-access publishing, and the dblp database.  Let’s zoom in on the seminars, traditionally held at the Schloss Dagstuhl (nowadays with a hybrid option).

The castle is located in a small village in Germany named Wadern, close to the borders with France and Luxembourg, roughly one hour from Saarbrücken (Germany). The access by public transportation is quite tedious and the last mile is done by car or taxi. The castle is helping attendees to share their arrival schedule with another in order to book shared taxis.

The invitation process

Attending a Dagstuhl seminar can only be done upon personal invitation from the organizers who select guests based on their expertise on the topic of the seminar. These invitations are sent by email by the scientific director of Dagstuhl. Participants are asked to reply within about 6 weeks via the Door registration system. Without a reply, their seat will be proposed to another attendee in the following round of invitations.

Invitations are done in several rounds (usually 2 or 3) until all seats are filled. Although the list of guests is established by the scientists organizing the seminar, Dagstuhl is monitoring the diversity and balance in participants’ profiles (in terms of seniority level, academia/industry, geographical distribution, and gender) and requesting the organizers to make adjustments accordingly.

Dagstuhl seminars used to be held on-site only, and that was the entire point of the experience. Nowadays, Dagstuhl also accommodates hybrid participation, and offers technical support in the main conference rooms.

The castle experience

Schloss Dagstuhl is a non-profit funded by the federal and state governments of Germany. The on-site participation fee of 300 Euro (in 2023) for the workshop includes accommodation in a single room at Dagstuhl center, full board, and all taxes. Organizers are invited and do not pay an on-site participation fee. The castle is offering the possibility to host attendees’ families during the week, on request.

The arrival of attendees is planned for Sunday afternoon. The seminar then starts on Monday morning and runs for 4.5 days until Friday lunchtime.
There is a self-service machine to check in any time and receive one’s access badge (for the rooms and the castle entrance). The rooms seem randomly allocated, mine was located in the old Dagstuhl castle for both seminars. There is also a new building hosting the CS library and main conference rooms. The castle includes a diversity of meeting rooms (with different styles, check them all out!), sports and leisure facilities (sauna, gym, pool table, board games, music room), a canteen & a wine cellar. In the Summer, people can work outside on the terrace or in the park.

Agenda of a week at Dagstuhl

The working day usually starts at 9 am, and ends around 5:30 pm with a long lunch break. Following the main activities, participants self-organize their evenings. Some like to go play music together in the music room, while others enjoy a drink and board games in the wine cellar. Usually, smaller groups form serendipituously and switch throughout the week.

The Dagstuhl week typically involves half a day of hiking or sightseeing with the group. For my first seminar in February, we had beautiful winter sunny weather (a cold 6°C on average though). We did a short 8 km hike on Wednesday afternoon, and went for shorter post-lunch strolls around the castle. During my second seminar, we brought our guests by bus (additional costs paid by each attendee) to the Saarschleife, a well-known hike in the area along a river bench and through a beautiful forest.

During the week, participants are also invited to (manually) write an abstract summarizing their research and interest in the topic of the workshop. Schloss Dagstuhl thus has a unique collection of abstract books with handwritten abstracts by each attendee.

At the end of the stay, participants fill out a satisfaction survey about their experience at the Castle and with the seminar (and will receive another survey a few months after the end of the seminar, to assess the mid-term impact).

Now, what about the scientific content of the seminar?

What makes the experience so productive and intense (unique in my view) is the fact of living together with these 20-35 brilliant minds for a full week, basically from morning to (often late) evenings. Disclaimer: it can be quite overwhelming for some. The program is freely made by the organizers, so this varies between seminars. You can see two examples in related posts:

Seminar 23092 “A Human-Computer Interaction Perspective to Drive Change towards Sustainable Future”

Seminar 23292 on SportsHCI

The Dagstuhl report series

Each Dagstuhl seminar has to produce an official report, published in the Dagstuhl report series around 6-8 months after the seminar. The reports at least include an executive summary, the abstract of the presentations by each participant, and a synthesis of the activities conducted during the week. You can browse the reports from past seminars on the Dagstuhl Reports database. Dagstuhl also attempts to keep track of the outcomes (publications, follow-up events, funding grants, etc) derived from their seminars.