Call For Participation

The 2027 Mid-Atlantic Alt.Ctrl Symposium (MAACS 2027) seeks abstract submissions for the inaugural MAACS event to be held on January 5, 2027 in National Harbor, MD, USA. This event will be a meeting place for designers, developers, artists, and researchers working with alternative game controllers and playful installations to meet and share practices, findings, and discussions relevant to their work. We welcome contributions from individuals and groups from all backgrounds and all related disciplines.

Abstract Submissions:

Abstract submissions will be presented as a brief talk, with 12 minutes allocated for presentation and 8 minutes allocated for Q&A. Abstract contribution types include, but are not limited to: 

  • Design And Production Practices: Descriptions of novel techniques for the design, creation, and deployment of alternative controller works that may be of interest to other practitioners in the community.
  • Alt.Ctrl Community Topics: Topics for community discussions, broadly conceived, including funding and fiscal concerns, events and showcasing landscapes, community initiatives and reports, and outreach practices.
  • Provocations: New ideas intended to spark conversation and debate within the community and yield new directions for future work.
  • Postmortems: Lessons learned from the creation, development, iteration, or deployment of prior works.
  • Academic Research: Scholarly research work pertaining to alternative game controllers or adjacent fields.

Interactive Session Proposal Submissions:

Those who wish to engage community members in a longer-term session with discussion-based engagement or hands-on activity may wish to submit an Interactive Session proposal. These sessions will span 50 minutes and will be expected to actively engage attendees in discussion and/or hands-on activities.

Student Showcase Submissions:

Interactive demos made by or led by students are invited to submit to the MAACS Student Showcase. A jury of alt.ctrl experts will review submissions. Selected demos will be exhibited at a demo session on January 5th.

Formatting Guidelines:

We recommend using the ACM Extended Abstracts format for your submission. Details on the format, along with templates for both LaTeX and Microsoft Word can be found at https://authors.acm.org/proceedings/production-information/taps-production-workflow 

Abstract submissions should be no more than 1500 words, excluding references.

Interactive Session Proposal submissions should be no more than 2500 words and should include a detailed description of activities and planned timeline for the proposed session.

Student showcase submissions should include a written description of no more than 1000 words as well as a short video showing and describing the work. Videos should be submitted in .mp4 format and should be between 2 and 3 minutes in length. 

Important Dates:
All deadlines are at the Anywhere on Earth (AoE) UTC-12 time zone. 

  • September 4th, 2026: Submissions Due
  • October 9th, 2026: Notification of Acceptance
  • January 5th, 2027: Symposium Date

Submission Process:
Authors will submit their work via EasyChair at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=maacs2027.

Review Process:
Submissions will undergo a single-anonymous review process: submissions should keep authors’ names in the submission. Submissions will be reviewed by three reviewers.