Venue

The conference will be hosted close to the city center with plenty of choices for housing and easy access by public transport. Since the time of the conference conflicts with the summer term teaching period, which means that all lecture halls are busy, we have decided to go for the Sheraton hotel at Munich Arabella park.

We have contacted the hotel to confirm that the two target weeks in June 2018 are available and that the format of the conference is feasible. The Sheraton features a separate conference area with a common open space for breaks and posters and a number of halls for the main conference, the workshops, and demo sessions. The largest hall easily accommodate more than 250 attendees with individual tables. Four halls for 100+ people are available in parallel.

The venue is easily reached by subway (line U4) and situated in a nice neighborhood. The Westin hotel (for additional accommodation) is on the opposite side of the street and several other hotels are close by. A number of restaurants are in walking distance. The city center (Odeonsplatz, Karlsplatz) is within 10min by direct subway. Plan Bs: Munich offers a number of further sizable hotels that fulfill the requirements for MobiSys in case the primary venue would not be available. Those include the following: Tge Grand Westin, Hilton Munich Park, Sofitel Munich Bayerpost, and Maritim Hotel Munich. Moreover, the city features several convention centers, such as Congress Center Munich (CCM) and the Conference Center of the Hannes-Seidl-Stiftung that could be considered. Also the backup venues are easily accessible with public transportation.

Site City: Munich

The city of Munich is the capital of the State of Bavaria located in the South of Germany. With 1.4 million inhabitants (2.6 million in the urban region), Munich is the third largest city of Germany (after Berlin and Hamburg).

Bavaria is one of the wealthier German states and Munich is a stable and prospering place with a positive economic and other trends. Bavaria and Munich strive for (and succeed in) attracting entrepreneurs, especially in the high-tech sector and emphasize digitization and mobility in the future as important themes. Munich is a safe place to visit (lower crime rate than other German cities) and, people enjoy a high quality of life with many quality restaurants, cafés and so on.

In this spirit, Munich is sometimes referred to as the “northernmost city of Italy”. The central city area is lively day and night and distances are short enough to allow moving around on foot or by one of the many means of public transportation (see below). The city is very international and the locals welcome visitors who come plentiful to see the city (not just during and for Oktoberfest).

The city and state are also home to substantial industry related to mobile systems, including companies such as BMW, MAN, Audi (in Ingolstadt) from the automotive sector and Google, IBM, Nokia, Siemens, Rohde & Schwarz, Huawei, and a broad spectrum of SMEs related to mobile and networked systems and services.

Munich features two universities, Technische Universität München (TUM) and Ludwigs-Maximilian-Universität München (LMU), both offering computer science and other schools related to MobiSys. Moreover, Munich hosts a University of Applied Sciences. This yields a substantial local student and researcher community in the field.

Transportation

Munich has a large international airport (MUC), which is the Lufthansa hub besides Frankfurt. MUC is serviced by essentially all major airlines (and airline alliances), features direct international flights to continents and otherwise usually connects via one hop to all destinations not directly reached. The airport services close to 41 million passengers in 2015. See http://www.munich-airport.de/en.

The airport is located in the North of the city, connected via two suburban train lines to the city center (S1 and S8); a ride takes some 35-45 minutes and costs EUR 10.50. Taxis are also available but the fare from the airport to the city is some EUR 50-60. Depending on the time of day, taxis may be slower than the train. All major car rental companies can be found at the airport as well as downtown.

Munich also features three train stations, Munich main station (Hauptbahnhof) and Pasing (to the West) as well as Munich East. They are frequent services to all major cities within Germany and to the neighboring countries, often on the German high-speed train ICE.

Munich offers a wealth of local transportation options, including an extensive subway and suburban train system, many tram lines, and countless buses. All share the basic fairly simple tariff system that requires only one type of ticket for all of the above. The city also offer many bike lanes and rental bikes for individual transport. Finally, several car sharing services such as DriveNow or car2go are available for individual trips inside and around the city.

Accommodation

TripAdvisor lists 395 hotels for Munich, many of which are centrally located. The conference hotel above offers the necessary capacity to host all attendees and we would work with ACM towards a room block allocation; other close-by options (walking distance) include the large Westin across the street, Leonardo Arabella Park hotel and hotel Rothof. But there are also inexpensive options available throughout the city, including many hostels, as well as apartments. As noted above, the U4 connects the venue to the city center in a 10min, opening up a wealth of alternatives from youth hostels to apartments. To support moving between hotel and the conference venue for those not staying or in walking distance of the venue, we foresee including public transportation tickets. The Munich public transportation service (MVV) offers fairly inexpensive congress tickets (some EUR 20 for five days for the inner region of Munich).

Social Events

Munich is has a rich cultural life and notable heritage so that many different options for different flavors of social events are available. We are planning for two social events:

1. Conference banquet at the TUM brewery on campus Weihenstephan

TUM is among the few universities that offers BSc and MSc degrees in Brewing and Beverage Technology and has a sizable institute including its own brewery for education and research. We will provide a guided tour of the brewing facilities with tasting of different beers (and non-alcoholic alternatives). Next to the brewery is Bräustüberl, a sizable restaurant to host the subsequent dinner in a vaulted cellar. These facilities are located in the North of Munich; we will provide organized bus transportation for each access. See http://www.braeustueberl-weihenstephan.de/en/index.php and https://www.tum.de/en/studies/studinews/issue-052011/show/article/30531/.

2. Welcome reception at BMW Museum

We are considering hosting the welcome reception at the BMW Museum, next to BMW World, which features vintage cars and engines from all eras of the century of BMW history. We have tentatively confirmed availability for the two possible conference weeks in June 2018 and are in the process of obtaining preliminary quotes to assess financial feasibility early on. See http://www.bmw-welt.com/en/index.html. Plan Bs: There are plenty further event locations. Bavaria being famous beers and there are many beer halls, some of which are large enough to serve as venues for the conference banquet, e.g., Augustinerkeller or Löwenbräukeller. Those also provide non-alcoholic drinks and vegetarian (or vegan) dishes. Also, alternative venues for the reception could be Deutsches Musuem (with appropriate catering). We would also consider approaching the city of Munich for a reception e.g. in the City Hall.