IEEE VR2016 Virtual Reality Conference is March 19-23 in Greenville, SC. As part of the program, the first Workshop on Immersive Analytics is being held on Sunday afternoon, March 20, and consist of: “a series of invited presentations by leading visualization, virtual reality, and interaction researchers, as well as short paper presentations, panels, and a poster session.” Organizers are: Jian Chen, University of Maryland; G. Elisabeta Marai, University of Illinois; Kim Marriott, Monash University; Falk Schreiber, Monash University; Bruce H. Thomas, University of South Australia. The goal of the workshop is:

to form an IA community and discuss what this community can do to advance discovery science and enable IA-based communication, define the specific research goals, and to discuss metrics to validate IA. We will also explore the ways in which IA differs from and offers benefits well beyond traditional visual analytics and virtual reality.

Todd and I submitted the paper Immersive Analytics: Building Virtual Data Worlds for Collaborative Decision Support. A PDF of this paper is available here. We will know whether it is accepted within a week.

Regardless of its acceptance, the exercise was very useful because the paper has integrated many pieces that are scattered across this website. Its four pages makes a strong case for IA and offers constructive suggestions on how to pursue this work. Todd and I would greatly appreciate your comments. Our emails are on the PDF, plus there is a discussion thread on our LinkedIn IA group.

Better yet, we are looking for 4-7 able-bodied innovators to code with us on several IA projects! See paper for details. Let’s build a few data worlds! Mucho thanks to Brad Stimpson and Theodore Omtzigt for helping out!

Update Feb 29, 2016: Our paper was accepted, despite harsh reviews. The revised draft is here. The reviewers felt that the paper was more marketing than research, although our intent was to promote the formation of an IA innovation community and its utilization for both research and commercial purposes. The reviewers also felt that the paper was not to academic standards, which is fair since it does not report on completed research. At the workshop, we hope to generate constructive discussion about core issues meaningful for both researchers and practitioners. If we can build a few bridges, it will be worth the effort. Stay tune for an update after the workshop. Is anyone attending?