Following the healthy response to the Call for Expressions of Interest in creating workshops for next year’s ERF, The ERF Programme Committee (PC) has begun work on the next stage. This is to review the initial submissions and make a first round of pre-clustering, so that overlapping workshop topics can be identified. For the teams submitting proposals the next stage will be to ‘put flesh on the bones’ of their proposals by preparing more detailed workshop descriptions with a September deadline. At that point – and possibly in time for the September newsletter – the PC will publish an initial list of workshop titles. Then, if anyone wants to play a part or thinks they can usefully contribute in some way to a particular workshop, they can contact the organisers directly. By this point the first steps will be made towards scheduling the workshops.
Meanwhile, the PC would also like everyone to understand the differences between the requirements and features expected in a ‘classic’ ERF workshop and those expected in an Industrial Scientific Track session. This follows some feedback after ERF2025. Here we provide a simple guide to clarify the different formats and processes behind the ‘classic’ ERF workshops and the research papers within the industrial scientific track.