ACM MM Workflow

Use this to run an ACM Multimedia submission as a scheduled campaign rather than a deadline scramble. The SIGMM calendar has a long gap between the April submission chain and the July decision, so the work clusters at the front and the back.

The ACM MM calendar (2026 anchors, AoE)

| Phase | 2026 date | What must be true | Skill | |---|---|---|---| | Scope + track choice | pre-March | Contribution is cross-modal; thematic area and track chosen | acmmm-topic-selection | | Draft + evidence | March | First page leads with the multimedia claim; ablations planned | acmmm-writing-style, acmmm-experiments | | Abstract | Mar 25 | Abstract registered in OpenReview | acmmm-submission | | Paper | Apr 1 | 6–8 sigconf pages, anonymous, final PDF | acmmm-submission | | Supplement | Apr 8 | Media/appendix package, anonymous, plays | acmmm-supplementary | | Rebuttal | ~Jun 4 | Anonymous response, small confirmatory results | acmmm-author-response | | Notification | ~early Jul | Decision + tier | acmmm-review-process | | Camera-ready | ~Aug 6 | De-anonymized ACM version, artifact released | acmmm-camera-ready | | Conference | Nov 10–14 | Registered; media-ready talk/poster | acmmm-camera-ready |

Treat these dates as the 2026 snapshot; reopen the current site each cycle. Note the 2026 notification date was listed inconsistently (July 7 on the CFP vs. July 9 elsewhere).

Front-loaded work (before April)

The April chain is unforgiving because three deadlines land in eight days. Do the slow work early:

• Lock the thematic area and track — they set format and blinding, and switching late is

expensive.

• Build the cross-modal evidence: matched baselines and the leave-one-modality-out

ablation that proves the fusion matters.

• Plan any user study now; recruiting raters cannot be done in the final week.
• Draft so the first page already leads with the multimedia contribution.

The three-deadline sprint

text
T-14d: freeze claims; media assets rendering from scripts
T-7d:  body fits 6-8 sigconf pages; references on overflow pages only
Mar 25: abstract registered (do not miss the earliest deadline)
Apr 1:  paper PDF final, anonymous, metadata-clean
Apr 8:  supplement packaged, anonymous, media plays for a stranger

The long gap and the rebuttal

Between April and June, prepare the confirmatory experiments a reviewer is likely to ask for (the missing baseline, the extra ablation) so the June rebuttal is a matter of reporting results, not scrambling to run them.

Back end (July–November)

• On acceptance, de-anonymize, complete ACM rights/CCS, and release the public artifact.
• Register early and plan travel to Rio; visas and international logistics are the usual

failure.

• Build a presentation that plays the media — the seam between modalities should be

seen/heard, not just described.

• On rejection, use the reviews to re-target: MM Asia, ICMR, a workshop, or next year's MM.

Risk register

| Risk | Where it bites | Mitigation | |---|---|---| | Missing the abstract deadline | Mar 25 forecloses the paper | Register the abstract days early | | Wrong track blinding | Desk reject | Confirm the track call before formatting | | Fusion not shown to matter | Reviews / rebuttal | Run the leave-one-modality-out ablation pre-submission | | User study not recruited in time | Perceptual claim unbacked | Start recruiting before April | | Broken anonymous media link | Lost evidence in review | Test the mirror from a clean machine | | Rio travel/visa delay | Cannot present | Start visa paperwork at acceptance |

Re-targeting after a rejection

An ACM MM rejection is not the end of the work. Match the reviews to the next move: a retrieval-leaning paper can go to ICMR; a systems-leaning one to MMSys; a regionally scoped or earlier-stage result to ACM Multimedia Asia or a workshop; a matured version to the ACM TOMM journal or next year's ACM MM. Fix the decisive critique — usually the cross-modal-significance one — before resubmitting anywhere.

Output format

text
[Current phase] <scope/draft/abstract/paper/supplement/rebuttal/decision/camera-ready/conference>
[On track?] yes / at-risk: <what slips>
[Next deadline] <date + deliverable>
[Active skill] <which skill to run now>
[Risks] <ordered>