mobisys-workflow

MobiSys Workflow

Use this as the project-management skill for a MobiSys submission. Replace every date with the

current official timetable and work backward from the one hard December cutoff on the

mobisys<yy>.hotcrp.com/deadlines page.

MobiSys is a conference, not a journal: no standing editor-in-chief, no article-processing

charge. The rotating leadership is the per-edition General Chairs and Program Chairs (2026

General Chairs: Fahim Kawsar and Cecilia Mascolo; Program Chairs 待核实). Committees rotate

yearly — re-check the current organizing-committee page rather than carrying a name forward.

The one-deadline calendar

Unlike MobiCom and NSDI, which run two deadlines a year, **MobiSys runs a single paper

deadline in early December feeding the following June conference**. There is no second gate

this cycle to catch a slip. That single fact governs the whole plan: the device experiments

must be finished, not started, before December.

Milestones

• Venue fit: confirm the contribution is a mobile/embedded system whose device behavior is

the result (mobisys-topic-selection).

• Evidence lock: freeze the system design and finish the on-device measurement campaign —

energy, latency, memory, thermal, and any deployment/user study.

• Paper registration: register title, abstract, authors, and conflicts on HotCRP before the

registration cutoff that precedes the paper upload.

• Paper deadline: upload the anonymous 12-page double-column PDF and required HotCRP fields.
• Round-1 outcome: early-reject notifications go out; survivors proceed to round 2.
• Round-2 reviews + rebuttal: read reviews, then draft a scope-limited rebuttal

(mobisys-author-response).

• Notification: archive reviews, rebuttal, and decision.
• Acceptance: prepare the ACM camera-ready, artifact-evaluation submission, registration, and

the June in-person talk and demo.

Backward plan from the December deadline

| Weeks out (heuristic) | Mobile-systems milestone |

|---|---|

| 12+ | System built; measurement harness and power instrument working end to end |

| 8 | On-device runs complete on all target devices; energy/latency logged with provenance |

| 6 | Deployment or user study done if the claim is a service |

| 4 | Full draft sitting in the 12-page ACM double-column template |

| 3 | Internal mock review by a systems reader; break-condition experiment added |

| 2 | Anonymity sweep including device/trace giveaways; artifact package smoke-tested |

| 1 | Numbers regenerated from logs so PDF and artifact cannot diverge |

| 0 | Registration then paper on HotCRP before the UTC cutoff |

These offsets are planning heuristics only — anchor each to the current official timetable,

never to a previous cycle's calendar.

Failure modes by stage

• Starting device measurement in November forces single-device, single-run results that read

as under-evaluated — the classic MobiSys evidence reject.

• Leaving format conversion to the final week surfaces overflow late; the 12-page

double-column budget is tighter than a working draft once figures are placed.

• Skipping the mock review forfeits the only chance to hear "your energy boundary is

undefined" from a colleague instead of a reviewer.

• Building the artifact after the paper deadline forfeits the ACM badges, which need a working

script-first package the AEC can run on its own machines (mobisys-artifact-evaluation).

Coordination notes

• Assign one named owner for the on-device measurement provenance and another for the

anonymity sweep; shared ownership is how both slip.

• Archive the exact submitted PDF, supplement, and artifact commit, since rebuttal replies

must quote them precisely and camera-ready must match the reviewed version.

• Because a miss costs a full year, decide the go/no-go on evidence completeness by the

four-week mark, not on deadline night.

Output format

[Current stage] idea / building / measuring / writing / registration / submitted / rebuttal / accepted
[Next official deadline] <date and source, or unknown>
[Critical path] <three tasks that determine readiness>
[Risk register] <device evidence / page budget / anonymity / artifact / one-deadline slip>
[Owner map] <task -> person or role>