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 when and where meetings are held, so you need to start by talking to him. There are usually 2 meetings a year, circulating between the US, Europe and Asia. It can be difficult for government-funded workers (especially from US Department of Energy labs) to get approval to travel to exotic locations though, so expect attendance to vary.

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. 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 provides PCs (capable of running Linux) for the students to use. Training is still possible if you don't have any, 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.

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

Talk to Bob Dalesio about ideas for the agenda, he usually knows who might have something particularly interesting to say. Who collects speakers names and titles can be agreed between you and him; if you do this as part of your registration website that is usually acceptable, but it does need manual scheduling of talks onto the Agenda. Talks are usually scheduled in 15 minute slots, some talks being given two or more slots for larger topics. The simplest way to show the agenda online is to convert a Spreadsheet into HTML.

More

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