We invite proposals to organise the 4th Alpine Rendez-Vous (ARV) on Technology Enhanced Learning in 2013 (Jan-March). Previous venues have been Villars (Switzerland, 2007), Garmisch-Partenkirchen (Germany, 2009) and La Clusaz (France, 2011).

The Alpine Rendez-Vous is not a standard conference but a set of independent workshops hold the same week in the same hotel. Typically, we had 3-5 workshops on a Monday - Tuesday and 3-5 workshops on Wednesday - Thursday. Each workshop typically gathers 13-20 participants. Participants from different workshops meet informally during coffee breaks, meals and the afternoon ski or hiking (12:00-16:00). On the Tuesday evening, a community event is organized (lectures, round tables, social event) for participants from all workshops. The spirit of the ARV is to combine rich and intense research interactions (hence small workshops) in a nice relaxed atmosphere (snow, ski, wood fires, …). As the word 'Alpine' indicates, it's usually conducted in a nice ski resort, in winter time, far from university campi or from usual conference hotels. Over these 3 editions, the ARV has reached a high reputation in terms of scientific quality and quality of life, which attracted scholars from far beyond Europe.

The ARV 2013 organizers will be responsible for selecting the workshops, for the program of the community event and its funding as well as for the logistics of the whole event (booking the hotel, facilitating transport, ...). The notion of 'workshop' is used here in a broad sense. For instance, many of us are involved in research projects which require coordination meetings that could be integrated in the Rendez-Vous. Workshop organizers select participants, define their activities and are financially responsible for the costs: for some events, the organizers have a budget for both local costs (food + accommodation) as well as travel costs, in other cases, participants pay they travel, in some cases they pay for both.

By 2013, the STELLAR Network of Excellence will have completed its work and EU funds may not be available to support this event. However, we are currently reviewing other possible sponsors for that time such as EATEL, TELEARC and others. Organizers should give thought in their bid about possible sources of funding and the viability of a more "self-funded" ARV plan. We, the previous organizers (Kris Lund, Frank Fischer, Pierre Dillenbourg), the European TEL community, the ISLS/CSCL community, and the members of STELLAR, are engaged to continue the ARV success story for many years.

The teams that are interested in organizing the 2013 ARV should send a short email to lena.hofmann@psy.lmu.de to express their interest. The email should contain information concerning:
• who they are (including possible cooperation partners)
• when and where they could organise the ARV
• if further budget is available for funding of the community event and/or workshops.

The deadline for expressing interest is September 15th 2011. STELLAR will select the two best candidates and ask them to prepare a full proposal.