How to run an EPICS Collaboration Meeting

This page is intended for "lessons learned" by sites who have run collaboration meetings, as hints to help future meetings run smoothly.

Organization

Bob Dalesio decides where meetings will be held, usually 9-12 months in advance, so you need to start by talking to him. There are usually 2 meetings a year, circulating between the US, Europe and Asia. Future meeting locations that have already been fixed are usually listed here.

Collaboration meetings are usually 3 days from Tuesday to Thursday or Wednesday to Friday, allowing for training and smaller working groups on the other days of the week. You'll need a big room for the full meeting, and some smaller meeting rooms for workshops and training sessions. Also somewhere near the refreshment location a room for any exhibitions; there are a growing number of companies interested in paying a small sum to put up a display table at these meetings.

Recent attendance has been between 80-130 people, but depends on the number of users from the hosting site and nearby. It can be difficult for government-funded workers (especially from US Department of Energy labs) to get approval for travel to exotic locations though, so expect attendance to vary. Workshops can be around 30 people, but may vary depending on the topic. If someone wants to run a workshop you can ask them for estimates on numbers.

If you want hands-on training, the organizers may provide PCs (capable of running Linux) for the students to use. Training is still possible without these, but will consist of lectures only. You would need to decide what kind of training you want, and organize some people in the community to give it.

Topics for workshops should generally be aligned with interests of the hosts. It will take support on the host side to make sure there is sufficient interest and attendance. The EPICS Core developers may ask if they can hold a private developers meeting a few days adjacent to the main meeting, which will usually require providing a 10-15 seat meeting room with WiFi for 1-2 days.

Communications

If possible, start creating a website for the meeting before it is first announced to on tech-talk; some people will want to be able to find out more about the location when they first hear about it, so the announcement should have a link to that website.

Eventually you'll most probably need online registration of attendees and possibly speakers, as well as to provide information about local hotels, transportation to/from nearby airports, and local tourist agencies for attendees' partners. Arranging a "partner programme" is usually unnecessary.

Facilities

For the main meeting, a hall with LCD projector(s) for computer connection and a PC to display the presentation files. Most people will bring talks in MS PowerPoint, Adobe PDF and/or OpenOffice Impress formats (installing OpenOffice on this machine is advised, but not essential if you give people notice). It saves time and confusion at these international meetings if the PC can be configured with English language settings (menus etc.).

Some presenters may want to use their own laptops for live demonstrations, or if they're using a less common presentation program.

In the large hall speakers should use a microphone if a PA is available; a radio-mic is preferred.

The main hall (and ideally the other meeting rooms too) needs to have reliable, high-bandwidth WiFi internet access since many people will bring a laptop and want to connect up during the meeting.

Laptop batteries don't last more than a few hours, so there will be demand for power sockets in the hall too. Providing extension leads spread about the room is generally a good idea and is much appreciated by attendees.

Refreshments should be available at the breaks mid-morning and mid-afternoon. If your institution can't afford to fund these itself it is acceptable to charge attendees a small fee at registration to pay for them. People will expect to pay for their own lunches, and also to pay to attend the conference dinner which is usually held on the evening before the last day.

Agenda

Setting an initial program structure gives presenters an idea of what topics the hosting institution may be particularly interested in. Discussing this with Bob Dalesio in advance is a good idea, he can provide information about recent work that has been taking place in the community that should be included.

In recent years the hosting site has been responsible for soliciting and collecting speakers names and talk titles; an Indico website can perform much of the clerical work involved automatically, but the talks will still have to be manual scheduled into the Agenda. Individual talks are usually 15 minutes long, but some may be given additional time for larger topics. Some meetings have experimented with "Lightning talks" of only 5 minutes, and even 1-slide talks have been tried.

The community will usually submit a number of submissions of presentations, but the hosts should expect to have to do some additional solicitation to fill out the program. This can (should) be informed by topics the host institute is interested in. Bob is usually helpful in this regard, with suggestions and contacts.

More

Please extend this note, I'm sure I have omitted many things...