cool stars, stellar systems, and the sun conference...

Cool Stars, Stellar Systems, and the Sun Conference Series: an Owner’s Manual

Version 1.9.1May 2007

L. M. Rebull, J. R. Stauffer, G. van Belle (CS14),

A. K. Dupree (CS1,2,3,10), J. Schmitt (CS13), T. Ayres (CS12),

…?

CS Owner’s Manual 2

Table of Contents1 HISTORY OF COOL STARS WORKSHOPS..................................................................................4

2 PHILOSOPHY OF THIS GUIDE.......................................................................................................5

3 THE SCIENCE ORGANIZING COMMITTEE (SOC)...................................................................5

4 SELECTING THE SCIENCE PROGRAM.......................................................................................6

4.1 CS14..............................................................................................................................................64.2 CS13..............................................................................................................................................74.3 CS12..............................................................................................................................................7

5 CONSTRUCTING THE SCIENCE PROGRAM.............................................................................7

5.1 CS14..............................................................................................................................................75.2 CS13..............................................................................................................................................85.3 CS12..............................................................................................................................................8

6 SELECTING A DATE.........................................................................................................................8

7 CREATING “EARLY BUZZ”............................................................................................................9

7.1 POSTER...........................................................................................................................................97.2 WEBSITE......................................................................................................................................107.3 MAILING LIST...............................................................................................................................10

8 ASSEMBLING A BUDGET..............................................................................................................10

8.1 EXPENSES AND FUNDING.............................................................................................................108.2 IMPORTANT BUDGET CONSIDERATIONS.......................................................................................128.3 OTHER THINGS TO REMEMBER.....................................................................................................12

9 STUDENT SUPPORT........................................................................................................................13

9.1 CS 14...........................................................................................................................................139.2 CS13............................................................................................................................................149.3 CS12............................................................................................................................................14

10 EXCURSIONS...............................................................................................................................15

11 PICNIC AND BANQUET.............................................................................................................15

12 CONFERENCE GIVE-AWAYS..................................................................................................16

13 CONFERENCE REGISTRATION INFRASTRUCTURE.......................................................17

13.1 CS 14...........................................................................................................................................1713.2 CS13............................................................................................................................................2013.3 CS12............................................................................................................................................20

14 SPLINTERS...................................................................................................................................20

15 NUMBERS OF PEOPLE..............................................................................................................23

15.1 CS14............................................................................................................................................2315.2 CS13............................................................................................................................................2315.3 CS12............................................................................................................................................24

16 POSTERS.......................................................................................................................................24

17 MEDIA RELATIONS...................................................................................................................26


18 SELECTION OF THE NEXT SITE............................................................................................26

19 OTHER PRACTICALITIES DURING THE MEETING.........................................................28

20 PROCEEDINGS............................................................................................................................30

21 SUMMARY AND ANY OTHER ITEMS OF INTEREST........................................................30

21.1 CS14............................................................................................................................................3021.1.1 CSW14 organizational timeline (for reference)................................................................3121.1.2 SOC Duties........................................................................................................................3221.1.3 LOC Duties........................................................................................................................3221.1.4 Joint SOC/LOC Duties......................................................................................................3221.1.5 Important recommendations and admonitions..................................................................3321.1.6 Lessons learned.................................................................................................................33

21.2 CS13............................................................................................................................................3421.3 CS12............................................................................................................................................34

22 Appendix..........................................................................................................................................34

Revision History:

v.1.9.1, 2 May 07 (LMR) – added information on switch used for the laptop and projectors.v. 1.9, 12 Apr 07 (LMR) – addition of media relations information from G. Squires (SSC).v. 1.8, 6 Dec 06 (LMR) – more minor updates. Inclusion of cautionary tale from CS12 in section 8.2. Addition of CS1 gif to appendix package.v. 1.7, 5 Dec 06 (LMR) – several comments from A. Dupree incorporated throughout.v. 1.6, 28 Nov 06 (LMR) – new placeholder for media relations, new information on budgets and local logistics.v. 1.5, 27 Nov 06 (LMR) – initial broad distribution version.


1 History of Cool Stars Workshops

The Cambridge Workshops on Cool Stars, Stellar Systems, and the Sun are the longest running independent astronomy meeting! The original Cool Stars Workshop, organized by Andrea Dupree, was held at Cambridge, Massachusetts (USA) and started on January 30, 1980. The creation of the “Cambridge Workshop” series was inspired by the invigorating meeting on “Solar Phenomena in Stars and Stellar Systems,” held at Bonas, France in 1980 (August 25th - September 5th). Since that time the Workshops have increased in attendance and length, reaching a three-fold increase in attendance by the 10th Anniversary - reflecting the scientific vitality of cool star research. The Workshops have been held biennially since 1981 and the first non-USA meeting was held in Florence Italy in 1995. Non-USA meetings are now a regular feature; every other meeting is usually held elsewhere. Typical meetings include a mixture of invited reviews, invited specialist talks and substantial poster display sessions. Also, with splinter sessions, the community proposes and prepares several segments of the meeting. It is an international venue for researchers from all disciplines of Cool Star research to gather together quite informally to discuss current and future research.

Previous meetings have been: CS 14 – Pasadena, CA – November 2006 CS 13 - Hamburg, Germany - July 2004 CS 12 - Boulder, CO, USA - July 2001 CS 11 - Tenerife, Spain - October 1999 CS 10 - Cambridge, MA, USA - 1997 CS 9 - Florence, Italy - 1995 CS 8 - Athens, GA, USA - 1993 CS 7 - Tucson, AZ, USA - 1991 CS 6 - Seattle, WA, USA - 1989 CS 5 - Boulder, CO, USA - 1987 CS 4 - Santa Fe, NM, USA - 1985 CS 3 - Cambridge, MA, USA - 1983 CS 2 - Cambridge, MA, USA - 1981 CS 1 - Cambridge, MA, USA - 1980

It is noteworthy that at Cool Stars 9 (in Florence, Italy) the first T dwarf (also the first confirmed brown dwarf) and the first extrasolar planets around Sun-like stars were announced, two research areas of cool stars that have expanded substantially in the past decade.


2 Philosophy of this Guide

The authors of this guide decided to write it during the CS14 meeting as a way of providing a sort of “institutional memory” for the CS series. It includes practical recommendations for items specific to the CS series, but also astronomy conferences in general. To fulfill both goals, where possible, we have included comparisons to (including hard data for) earlier CS meetings. In paragraphs relevant to those conferences that use phrases such as “we decided,” of course, it refers to the organizers for that specific conference (those paragraphs were most likely written by those organizers).

This guide is aimed at a newly selected host (or potential proposing host). In that vein, to make the text easier to read, we use phrases such as “your meeting.”

3 The Science Organizing Committee (SOC)

Traditionally, the SOC for CS meetings is large (~25 people). Since one of the goals of CS meetings is to increase communication between the solar and stellar communities, representatives from both communities should be on the SOC.

As one of the primary means to retain continuity in the Cool Stars series, it is recommended that about half the SOC should be retained from the previous meeting. The chairs from at least the two previous CS meetings are usually included in that retained population. The chair(s) of the meeting immediately preceding yours should provide you with some thoughts on which SOC members were particularly valuable for their inputs or simply for their faithfulness in attending telecons and responding to emails. CS14 has recommended that one representative from each of the 3 groups who proposed but did not get to host CS15 be included on the CS15 SOC; this should help prepare them to put in a proposal for CS17 if they want to do that – and in any case, the fact that they proposed for CS15 indicates that they have a significant interest in the future of the CS series. Current considerations for the formation of the SOC are that is should have a good balance between US and European members, and there should also be a reasonable gender balance. Future meetings might include membership in the SOC from Asian, Australia/New Zealand, and/or South American nations.


4 Selecting the Science Program

The science program, while including “traditional” fields, should also reflect local expertise. For example, the CS14 meeting in Pasadena included a focus on Spitzer and to some extent on interferometry because of the interests of the host institutions.

Over time, the CS series has had sessions including the following broad topics: Stellar magnetic activity Angular momentum evolution of low mass stars Brown dwarfs PMS stars and star formation Mass loss and winds Coronal abundances Helioseismology Stellar abundances (especially lithium) Stellar atmospheres and interiors Extrasolar planets Sun as a star; solar analogs

The topics that are covered have evolved in time to include more recent topics of interest; for example, brown dwarfs are a relatively recent acquisition.

In preparing for CS14, we were asked several times if we included the “end states” of cool stars, and/or giants (since they are cool stars too). Historically, this has not necessarily been a recurring emphasis; CS6 (chaired by G. Wallerstein at University of Washington) had sessions on evolution and luminous stars, and Betelgeuse (a red supergiant) has been a focus at several meetings. Post-main sequence stars have been part of the CS science menu and they could be a more significant part of a future meeting.

4.1 CS14

For CS14, the SOC decided on a large fraction of invited speakers, with the idea of creating a coherent review of a broad selection of topics. This goal seems to have been met, judging by comments we received at the meeting. However, we note that we had submission requests for approximately 10 times as many contributed talks as there was available space. In an idealized universe (two week conference?? not that that is at all realistic), we would have liked to have included both our coherent overview of the science we wished to cover, as well as more contributed talks.

4.2 CS13


4.3 CS12

5 Constructing the science program

The SOC will guide you in constructing the science program.

5.1 CS14

We made the decision to have the longest invited talk be 30-40 minutes, including questions. This was based on experiences from the Protostars and Planets (PP) conference series (another relatively long-running series). In those conferences, people selected for invited review talks are given 30-40 minutes (including questions) for their overview, which in practice is long enough to make substantial points but short enough that bad speakers do not have the floor for too long, and over the whole conference, a broad range of topics can be covered in the limited time available. For comparison, in the PP series, authors must bring with them to the conference a first draft of their chapter of the proceedings, and generally the first author of the proceedings is not necessarily the presenter at the conference. This forced preparation results in generally more coherent presentations than might otherwise be found in conferences.

The SOC chair and deputy chair worked with the SOC to define the overall structure of the meeting, using both group email exchanges and group telecons. Once the general structure (e.g. topics for plenary sessions and their order during the meeting, plus a general idea of when and where splinter sessions would be held) was determined, session chairs were identified. Those chairs were chosen as experts in the topic of the plenary session. In many cases, they were members of the SOC. The session chairs were heavily involved (deputized in some cases) in the selection of invited and contributed speakers for their session, and were encouraged to attempt to interact with the speakers in order to have their talks be integrated (so that all the important topics were covered without needless repetition). Often the session chair was also one of the invited speakers. In retrospect, this was probably not the best arrangement – the session chair had to introduce themselves for their talk, and they also had to police themselves to make sure they kept to their allotted time. However, we still believe the general idea of having a senior scientist responsible for trying to integrate the talks into a coherent whole is valid. An alternative version might be to have both a topical chair (who performs the science leadership role) and a plenary session chair (whose only role is to introduce speakers and help run the Q&A after each talk) would work better. We also introduced the concept of a “lieutenant” for each plenary session. The lieutenants were generally graduate students or young postdocs. Their role was to help the session chair make sure that all of the talks


were loaded onto the presentation laptop and that the talks were opened and ready when each new speaker was introduced. They also were to make sure each speaker was familiar with the microphone and laser pointer, and they were the ones who kept time during the talks and flagged the speaker when they were out of time. Although in our case, our lieutenants had colored cards (green, yellow, and red) to stand up to show the speakers how much time was left, we note that really only the senior scientist associated with each session has the authority to hover “threateningly” if a speaker goes over the limit.

5.2 CS13

5.3 CS12

6 Selecting a date

CS meetings are usually a week long, held either in July/Aug or Oct/Nov.

Conference DateCS14 Nov 6-10, 2006CS13 Jul 5-9, 2004CS12 Jul 30-Aug 3, 2001CS11 Oct 4-8, 1999CS10 July 15-19,1997 CS 9 Oct. 3-6, 1995

The SOC will be helpful in selecting an actual date (if such a date was not already included in your proposal).

Concerns are likely to include: Collisions with the academic year (and therefore teaching/class schedules). Collisions with the IAU in August (though sometimes the CS meetings are moved

off of IAU years to avoid the year entirely, and sometimes they are just moved to a different month).

Collisions with the June American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting (usually first week of June).

Collisions with any other meetings.


Occasionally also there are concerns about hitting election day in the US (first Tuesday in November) or Independence Day in the US (July 4th).

7 Creating “early buzz”

(In Hollywood, public discussions about a movie before it comes out and/or that the production house didn’t pay for are called “early buzz” and are highly sought.)

Places to advertise include: Star Formation Newsletter (http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/~reipurth/newsletter.htm) Cool Stars Newsletter (http://origins.colorado.edu/~skinners/coolnews.html) CFHT International Astronomy Meetings List

(http://cadcwww.dao.nrc.ca/meetings/) American Astronomical Society newsletter Emailing the list of previous attendees and/or their previous list of interested

people. For CS15, we can contribute our own list from CS14, and a cleaned CS13 list (e.g., all of the emails that bounced have been deleted).

7.1 Poster

For advertising purposes, you will need to create a conference poster. This is one of those items that always takes longer than you think it will. It is, however, a very important part of the process, because it sets the tone for the website, the logo, and other conference-related items.

Past meetings have used professional graphics designers either already part of the host institution, or married to someone at the host institution.

A sketch of a symbolic group of stars was chosen for CS1 and CS2, and variants of that have been incorporated into subsequent posters, including Santa Fe (CS4), Cambridge (CS10), Boulder (CS12), and Pasadena (CS14). A gif of this graphic can be found in the package accompanying this manual. Many of the more recent conferences still have websites up, so their posters can be viewed/downloaded.

7.2 Website

Even if (when) the poster takes longer than you thought to create, it’s important to get a website together so that people can start marking the dates in their calendars, etc. For

http://cadcwww.dao.nrc.ca/meetings/


CS14, we used the basic information to create an initial website that later was totally redesigned.

Just as a note here (because it falls under the heading of ‘website’), it would have been terribly useful if certain aspects of the website such as the list of attendees had been totally automated. A surprising number of people took our web list of attendees very seriously, and would not believe that they were actually registered (even upon receiving automatic mail, and then personalized mail) until they saw their name on that page.

7.3 Mailing list

Creating an informational mailing list early on is a great way to reach the community of interested people. In practice, for CS14, we started out requiring people subscribe themselves to the list. This worked for about ~60 of the most enthusiastic people (~10% of the final subscriptions). In the end, we manually subscribed people. We wished we had something that automatically subscribed all registrants and people submitting abstracts (not always the same people). We had about 650 people subscribed in the end (much more than we had attend).

8 Assembling a budget

8.1 Expenses and funding

The major categories of expenses for CS14 were: Conference site – Your rooms, essentially. Audio – Microphones & public address audio systems. Use of the headset style,

not lapel style, microphones is abhorred by speakers and adored by audiences. Force it on your speakers.

Visual – A large screen and large projector/beamer for your plenary session room is important. The CS14 screen for the main room jumped in cost (from $88 per day for a 10’x10’ to $350 a day for a 16’x12’ screen) and then necessitated a much brighter beamer ($350 a day for a 5000 lumens projector) but the audience greatly appreciated the larger, brighter image throughout the week.

Internet – Wireless connection fees and wireless hubs. Internet café – Computers and internet access. We did not provide a printer in the

CS14 café, and we probably should have. The internet café was staffed by volunteers, and it was necessary to have someone there (not just for security, but to answer questions), so as a result if there were no volunteers, the café was closed. Several people would have liked it to have been open longer hours than it was.


Transportation – The buses for moving people around – to/from picnics, excursions, etc.

Poster display boards – For display of the posters in the poster rooms. Publications – Preparation and mailing of a conference poster, an abstract book,

information posters for the meeting (eg. daily agenda, etc.) and also the costs associated with a proceedings, including the book and optical media.

Food – Opening reception, closing picnic, AM coffee breaks, PM coffee breaks, SOC dinner, and conference banquet. Including the conference banquet in the registration fee encourages all to go and is strongly encouraged.

Trinkets – Conference bag, trinket (flashlight in the case of CS14), logo pen, coffee mug, t-shirt, etc. Having a conference logo is very useful for this purpose, and also for branding any conference communications.

Major categories of funding for CS14 were: Institutional ‘seed’ funds – Dollars directly from the host institution. Corporate sponsorship. Registration fee funds – To encourage early registration, having a graded scale is

useful. CS14’s fee was $260 until about 2 months before the meeting, and then went to $290 until the meeting itself, when it settled at $320.

Additional possible funding sources, utilized for previous Cool Stars meetings: Host city funding. (Europeans often get donations from their city; this tends not to

happen in the US.) Co-host meeting with other events – Holding joint meetings with other groups

helps leverage budget contributions and expand the CS meeting audience (CS13 was joint with AG summer meeting; CS14 was joint with annual Spitzer meeting and TPF/Darwin meeting).

US government funding from NASA and/or NSF. (And personal contacts with NSF and NASA should be established as soon as you can to make sure that proposal schedules can be met. These schedules of proposal writing and peer review and funding frequently span 2 years!) (NOTE ALSO information in “Important budget considerations” below.)

Note also that Education and Public Outreach (EPO) funding (to include teachers and/or other public outreach efforts) may be available. (We had this lined up for CS10 to give teachers a day of background seminars and then have them attend the meeting. Funding was indicated but not finalized before our deadline to sign up teachers, so this program was never carried out.)

It is often possible to obtain support from aerospace companies, particularly for items that are hard to fund otherwise (e.g. receptions).

The complete CS14 budget is included as part of the package of supporting materials accompanying this document.


8.2 Important budget considerations

In certain cases, such as US federal funding, there are limitations on uses of that funding. For example, there are many restrictions on what, if any, food may be purchased with such funds. Conference organizers should explore the degree to which there may be such restrictions from their funding sources and organize their accounting accordingly. For Cool Stars 14, about half of the funding was provided by the Spitzer and Michelson Science Centers – US federal funds that came with restrictions. The other half of CS14 funding came from registration fees; these funds were free of any federal restrictions. As such, to avoid any problems, these two funding sources were kept separate, and all of the coffee breaks and conference dinner expenses were funded by the latter funds.

Note especially the following experience from CS13: Here is a caution to US CS groups seeking particularly funding from NSF. If you receive such support (CS12 had about $10K of NSF money), the NSF views their funds as “tainting” your entire budget, making it all essentially federal money (even the registration fees) and thus subject to the several restrictions imposed on uses of federal funds...some many months after CS12 was over, a federal auditor examined our books, and disallowed many of our expenses; in the end requesting that the University refund to the feds MORE money than had been received from the agency in the first place (!)...it required a great deal of time and negotiating effort to convince the auditor to back down and accept a much smaller settlement (which my University paid out of internal funds, even though there still was a balance left in our CS12 account at the time).

8.3 Other things to remember

Be sure to bookkeep (and propagate through your budget) appropriate funds for: Taxes – For CA for CS14 it was 8.25%. Service fees – Many hotels charge a ~20% fee for essentially anything that you

rent or purchase from them. CS14’s Hilton charge was 21% - and this fee is in itself taxable!

Overhead – Your own institution will in many cases charge you to spend money. At the time of CS14, JPL billed 10% overhead, and the Caltech rate was 56%.

9 Student support

The CS series has traditionally placed a heavy emphasis on supporting students in particular but also other scientists needing support. The SOC, LOC, and invited speakers are often asked to pay registration fees to allow for more student support.


One of the authors would like to point out from personal experience that this funding should be explicitly advertised on the conference website. (She did not attend CS11 in Tenerife because as a graduate student, she did not have funding and was not aware that she could apply for funding. She was later told by an organizer after the conference was long past that they had money left over in this pot.)

As part of this overarching concept of student support, CS meetings have also often provided dorms or hostels or other very cheap housing near the meetings.

9.1 CS 14

CS14 had about $15K to give away, and there were 40 requests for about 5 times as much money. Many of the requests were for simple waiving of the registration fee. Half of the requests came from Europe. Many other requests came in from the US. The remaining requests came in from Asia (India, China, Turkey), and Latin America (Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil). Several requests came in late, including one from Africa. Our deadline was Jul 21 for our meeting in November. We felt that this was sufficiently in advance that people who were turned down still had enough time to find another source of funding. Many requests came in over the intervening months between July and November. Because of our oversubscription ratio by the deadline in July, only in extenuating circumstances did we offer any support; all of the remaining support requests that were granted were solely for waiving of the registration fee. In the end, we found some additional money, and gave money to ~25 people, most of whom were graduate students or young postdocs.

The important parts of our financial support application form looked like this:

Limited financial support is available for graduate students and postdocs. We will take requests for financial support from June 1st, 2006 thru July 21st, 2006. Decisions will be announced by August 7th, 2006. Depending on the degree of determined need, awarded support (in the form of expense reimbursement) may include one or more of the following:

* Registration Fee * Hotel (supported attendees will be paired together in sleeping rooms) * Meals * Air Fare (in severe cases)

Instructions:Please provide the following information in the form provided below. We must receive all the below information, as well as a letter of


recommendation from your advisor/supervisor by July 21st, 2006 in order to be considered for financial support.

Full Name: Email Address: Advisor / Supervisor InformationIf you are a student or postdoc, a letter of recommendation from your advisor/supervisor is strongly desired in order to be considered for financial support. The letter must include a statement of financial need and should be emailed to [email protected] NameAdvisor email

Statement of researchPlease give a short (< 400 word) description of your current research and research interests, as well as a description of how you will contribute to and benefit from the conference. Please indicate your degree program & estimated completion date (if applicable) and if you intend to present at CS14. Use ASCII characters; do not include inline LaTeX codes as they will not be processed.

Support JustificationPlease give a brief (<250 word) justification of your need for financial support. Please indicate if you will need any of the following: airfare (and estimated cost thereof), hotel, per diem, and registration; also indicate if you have any available matching funds. Use ASCII characters; do not include inline LaTeX codes as they will not be processed.

9.2 CS13

9.3 CS12

10 Excursions


An important part of the CS experience is the inclusion of excursions! These provide informal settings for general networking as well as on-the-fly science discussions. The fees to cover the basic price of the excursions are usually in addition to registration fees.Often these excursions occur in the middle of the meeting (usually in place of an afternoon science session), which helps to break up the stress of several continuous days of talks.

NB: For CS14, the TPF sessions ran Wednesday afternoon, so some people did not attend the excursions because they wanted to attend the talks.

Conference Excursion Number (fraction) attending

CS14 Wed afternoon: three offered (Mt. Wilson, Getty Museum, Miracle Mile/Hollywood) but one cancelled due to lack of interest (Miracle Mile/Hollywood).

Mt. Wilson: 73 people (92 signed up) [=16-20%];Getty: 31 people [7%]

CS13 Wednesday afternoon tour of DESY. 99/293 (~34%)CS12 Wednesday morning hikes in the Rocky Mountains

for a wide range of skill levels.CS11 Wine and cheese tasting in the Orotava Valley,

visits to Teide Observatory and Roque de los Muchachos Obs.

CS10 “Duck” tour of Boston; Red Sox baseball game; whale watching; beer-pub crawl; free beer tasting at a poster session.

CS 9 Bus trip to the Chianti region; music concert by the Fiesole Quartet

11 Picnic and banquetRecent years have seen a picnic in addition to a banquet. Note that the fraction of vegetarians in the astronomical community is higher than in the general population. It pays to have a checkbox on the registration form where the vegetarians can self-identify early in the process.

NB: for CS14, our banquet ticket was included in the registration fee, so people couldn’t “get out of it”, and our picnic was concurrent with some of the TPF sessions, so the parties interested in the TPF talks did not attend the picnic.

Conference Picnic/Banquet information Number (fraction) attending


CS14 Thursday night: banquet at local restaurant (ticket included in registration); Friday afternoon: picnic at Caltech (free).

385 (87%) for banquet, including 32 vegetarians and 2 vegans; 140-160 people at picnic (31-36%)

CS13 Thursday night: harbor cruise banquet; Friday afternoon: picnic at the Hamburger Sternwarte in Bergedorf.

176/293 (60%) for banquet; 160/293 (55%) for picnic

CS12 Tuesday night: cookout at Flagstaff Mountain; Thursday night: banquet

CS11 Banquet in the Liceo de TaoroCS10 Boston harbor clambake on Thompsons

Island in Boston Harbor; banquet at the conference hotel (with astronomical songs by Physics Chanteuse Lynda Williams)

CS 9 Banquet at the Villa di Maiano in the hills overlooking Florence

12 Conference give-aways

The number and type of give-aways depends of course on the conference budget.

Conference Give-awayCS14 Conference bags, mini mag lights, pens; cafepress.com website set up after

the fact for t-shirts, mugs at SOC’s requestCS13 T-shirts available for purchase, conference bags donated by Hamburg

businessCS12 Conference bags, t-shirts, mugsCS11 Mouse padsCS10 Mugs given away, t-shirts available for purchaseCS 9 Brown fabric/leather folders given away, t-shirts for purchase

13 Conference registration infrastructure

If you have the ability to pay someone else to manage registration and credit cards, we strongly recommend you do so.


13.1CS 14

For CS14, in the end, this was a huge headache. We did registration by credit card, which was by far the easiest method for us, administratively. For the overwhelming majority of people, this worked flawlessly; of course, the problems are the ones that loom largest in our memories.

We had a setup whereby astronomers filled out a series of two forms, the first one of which emailed us basic information (e.g., badge name) and the second of which contacted the credit card company with the credit card information, and if the credit card went through, we got a second email. It took us quite a while after registration opened to realize that we only had one set of emails for several people, meaning that a significant fraction of credit cards were not going through. Our system matched billing addresses automatically, which worked in most cases overall. The most common error was having someone put in their work address rather than their billing address. Amongst the problems, the most common country (by far) was the UK. For some reason (still unknown), the system had a terrible time matching the addresses of many UK residents. Many went through, but others (even from the same city) would not go through despite repeated efforts. (Addresses, even those from countries using languages with characters not usually found in standard US ASCII, went through without a problem in many cases, so we’re still mystified.) Several astronomers (the majority of whom were from Latin America) did not even own credit cards. One astronomer refused to enter a credit card online. Several astronomers from Europe requested bank transfers (generally totally unheard of in the US) or requested that they be allowed to bring checks instead. Since the only way to register in advance was by credit card, all of this complicated matters. We provided a backup method of registration whereby people could send or bring checks. Several astronomers borrowed a friend’s card (we could see several people from a given institution all using one person’s personal credit card).

The important parts of our registration form looked like this:On-line Early Registration Fee - $260 -- until September 6, 2006On-line Registration Fee - $290 -- until October 30, 2006On-site Registration Fee - $320

Registration includes:

* Conference attendance * Wireless internet access * Coffee breaks * Conference banquet * Conference proceedings


Cancellation Policy: Cancellations must be received in writing or via email by September 6, 2006 for a full refund less a $30 processing charge. Cancellations received after September 6, 2006 thru October 30, 2006 receive a 50% refund. Cancellations after October 30, 2006, or persons who do not appear at the conference, are not eligible for any refund.

Note: The credit card transaction in this form is rejected when using some older browsers. It is known to work if using Netscape 7.1 (including Mozilla) or Internet Explorer 6 or higher. If you do not have a compatible browser available, Please contact [email protected] tell us which meeting(s) you plan on attending so that we may obtain an approximate head count for the TPF/Darwin Workshop. This choice does not exclude you from attending sessions for either meeting.

I plan to attend CS14 only (Mon-Fri)I plan to attend the TPF/Darwin Satellite meeting only (Wed-Sat)I plan to attend both CS14 (Mon-Fri) and the TPF/Darwin Satellite meeting (Wed-Sat)

Personal Information: (* Required, + Partial combination required)* First Name: * Last Name: * Name for ID Badge: * University/Company for ID Badge:(Limited to 25 chars to fit on badge) * Email: * Confirm Email: Mailing Address:* Line 1: Line 2: * City: + State/Province: + Zip/Mail code: + Country (default USA): Telephone: Door Registration Fee - $320Waived Registration fee - $0 Waiver Code:

Conference Banquet: Dinner at Twin Palms -- Thursday, November 9th, 2006

Registration fee includes the conference banquet for attendees. Limited Space for guests! First come first served.


Additional guest tickets can be purchased here

guest ticket(s) - $45 each

We will be serving a Duet of Bistro Steak & Salmon. If you would prefer the vegetarian meal, Artichoke Ravioli, please indicate total number of vegetarian dinners here:

vegetarian plates

Excursions: Wednesday, November 8th, 2006

Registration fee DOES NOT include the excursion for attendees. Limited Space for guests! First come first served.

Excursion ticket includes bus fare to excursion and a box lunch. You may select one of the following excursions:

No excursionMiracle MileGetty CenterMount Wilson

Please choose the TOTAL number of excursion tickets you would like to purchase (including one for yourself):

excursion tickets - $25 each

A box lunch including chicken pesto sandwich will be provided. If you would prefer the vegatarian sandwich, Tomato Mozzarella, please indicate total number of vegetarian lunches here:

vegetarian box lunchesWe only accept VISA, MASTER CARD or AMERICAN EXPRESS for online registration. If you are unable to pay by credit card contact [email protected]

13.2CS13


13.3CS12

14 Splinters

For purposes of this discussion, “parallel sessions” means sessions organized by the SOC and run by the LOC, operating concurrently. “Splinter sessions” have a slightly different definition, the distinction being that the organizer of the content of the session is not necessarily from the SOC. Splinter sessions were introduced starting in CS13 (though parallel sessions were part of previous CS meetings, and it may be that splinters [in the sense of the word about to be described] were part of CS8, CS9 and/or CS10, but whether or not splinters were involved is at this point lost in the mists of time). [we are trying to track this down.] The original idea was to have slightly more informal discussions led by self-selected astronomers, on topics selected closer to the meeting than when the science program was set to allow for “hot topics.” It was envisioned that some would be more panel discussions, and some would be more mini-conferences in their own right; the convenors of each splinter would decide. All sessions would contribute a single article to the proceedings, written by the convenors of that session.

CS13 solicited proposals, and had 7 splinter submissions, all of which were accepted for that meeting. These were:

Formation and Evolution of very Low Mass Stars and Brown Dwarfs Magnetic Activity in young stars The relevance and future of the Ultraviolet Range Spectral Classification beyond M What future for stellar X-ray Spectroscopy? Mass-loss across the Giant Branches Imaging of Cool Stars

CS14 solicited proposals and received 16 (in various degrees of completeness). In response, we rearranged the schedule as much as possible to allow more splinters to be included. We accepted 9 for during the days of the meeting and put a 10th in the evening Tuesday night. These were:

Spectral Diagnostics of Hot Plasma from Cool Stars The Formation of Low-Mass Protostars and Proto-BDs Mining the Next Generation of Surveys for Cool Star Science Stellar Ages Disks around Cool Stars and BDs Cool Stars in Hot Places Habitability and Life on Planets around Cool Stars


Sub-Stellar Twins: Binarity in BDs Coronal Structure of PMS Stars After hours special on Tuesday night: Large Community Projects for the Great

Observatories

We found that we had to explain, again and again, the concept of the splinters being sort of mini-meetings in their own right. As for CS13, we turned over all control of each splinter to the convenor. Some convenors took this concept to extremes, getting a separate entry on the CFHT website and a special advertisement in the Star Formation Newsletter, a website with its own logo, and asked us if we would do special registrations for people wishing to only attend their splinter (we did not offer one-day registrations). In the other extreme, some convenors did not have a detailed schedule until right before the meeting, and some never did have websites.

There were several implications of the fact that each convenor assembled their own schedule.

We did not have a schedule for any splinter in our abstract/program book. We got some complaints about this. As a compromise, in the two cases where we had abstracts from splinter presentations, we included all of those presentation abstracts as part of the splinter abstract in the abstract/program book.

We selected plenary speakers independently from what the splinters were doing; in several cases, despite having a 10x oversubscription of requests to give talks during the plenary, some plenary speakers were also asked to give splinter talks. In one case, the speaker gave exactly the same talk at the splinter as he had in the plenary.

Several splinter talk requests were submitted to us using the abstract form as if they were requesting a plenary talk. They were given poster space; some people did not use their allocated poster space because they presented their information instead in the splinter session.

During the meeting, we already had several requests from splinter presenters to be allowed to contribute their own writeup to the proceedings, independently from and in addition to the writeup that will be contributed by the convenor to the printed proceedings. We will probably treat all of the people from the splinters who want to do this as if they had posters, e.g., they will be given a disk space allocation for their contribution on the CD/DVD that will come with our proceedings.

It is clear that there is tremendous confusion about how the splinters are supposed to work. Most people are assuming that they are parallel sessions, as can be found in, eg., AAS meetings, where the presentations, organization, schedules, and proceedings are controlled by the organizers. For future meetings, we recommend that at least one of the following things occur:

the splinter concept be explained better, early, and often, and/or


the schedules be submitted to the conference organizers early (thereby defeating the purpose of rapid response to emerging topics), and/or

the session be treated explicitly as parallel sessions (removing entirely or limiting the proposal/convenor process, thereby defeating the purpose of getting topics beyond those considered by the SOC into the meeting, but allowing for a greater diversity in speakers).

Our web page included the following instructions for Splinter proposers:

The CS14 SOC specifically invites the community to propose splinter sessions on current hot topics. Proposals for splinter sessions can be made by individuals or groups of individuals. At this time, we are planning that six to eight splinter sessions can be accommodated in our schedule, but this number may change in the future.

Any splinter session proposal should include the following:

1. Title 2. One page summary of the goal of the session 3. Convenor 4. List of participants, panelists etc. who agree to come to the session 5. Format suggestion that includes a description on how the audience will be involved 6. The proposed duration of the session (1.5 hrs or 3 hrs) 7. Commitment to contribute a summary of the session for the proceedings

Deadline for splinter session proposals is May 15, 2006. Please submit proposals by mailing a plain text file to [email protected] with the subject line 'Splinter Session Proposal'.

We plan to announce accepted splinter sessions by the end of June 2006. Participants willing to contribute in the splinter sessions must make arrangements directly with the convenor.

Topics which have been suggested in SOC deliberations of the schedule to date include (no one has been assigned to these; feel free to propose for these or entirely new topics):

* The fundamental properties of low mass stars * Stellar ages * Evolved star winds, mass-loss, dust signatures * Solar/stellar modeling; comparison to observations * Imaging of stars


* Disk evolutionary timescales; planet formation/migration * Stellar activity cycles * Jets in pre- and post-MS * Thoughts/plans for future "stellar" SMEX/midex missions

15 Numbers of people

Despite all of your best planning and coaxing, everyone will register at the last possible moment.

15.1CS14

We had 445 registrants (CS14+TPF), with just about a dozen truly walk-up registrants (e.g., people we didn’t know were coming from their registration attempts online prior to the meeting). There were 261 people who attended only the CS sessions, and 184 people who attended at least some sessions from both the CS and TPF meetings. Just 69 people attended solely for the purpose of coming to the TPF meeting, and a fraction of those would probably not necessarily have any interest in a future CS meeting.

We tried to encourage early registration by advertising a policy whereby everyone who had a first-author poster was supposed to have registered (a la AAS meetings). In the end, we scared some folks, but did not end up enforcing this because it would have required a manual check of 400+ abstracts and it was just too much to do. An automated check would have been ideal, but very tough for us to implement because of our setup.

Perhaps a scheme whereby people must have a registration number first before being allowed to submit an abstract is the way to go. This may result in many more refunds to be issued (we had about 20 cancellations of abstracts, and a handful of people who refused to come unless they were given a [contributed] plenary talk, a decision that was not made until after our early registration deadline).

15.2CS13

Juergen’s email said 293 registered participants.

15.3CS12

Their website has 186 participants. Unsure if this is the final count or not.


16 Posters

Standard poster spaces (~3 ft by ~3 ft) need to be provided for several hundred posters at once. We have found that one big poster session is vastly preferable to two (or more) separate poster sessions, and that fewer, larger, physically closer rooms are also much preferred. Putting the food for breaks in the room(s) with the posters works well for getting people into the poster areas.

One poster per person is preferable, just on the basis of space. CS13 enforced this policy. CS14 requested that this be followed, but we had plenty of folks who submitted 2 or even 3. There was some concern over invited speakers being able to bring an additional poster on their more recent work.

For CS14, we did not reject any posters; some people explicitly requested letters of acceptance of their poster. Since this conference is now getting large enough to be comparable in size to a summer AAS, it may be high enough visibility that we may end up getting some posters that may be politely described as “of questionable quality,” or more rudely described as “crackpotty.” Experiences by high-visibility organizations such as the AAS and APS suggest that rejecting such posters can result in the unstable authors taking violent revenge on the organizers (the APS office was shot up). Higher visibility is a double-edged sword! One suggestion may be to require affiliation with an educational and/or research institution, and/or require registration before abstract submission.

For CS14, it was important to us to schedule long enough breaks to provide poster viewing time during the day (and to absorb talk timing overruns as well). At a recent meeting (which shall remain nameless to protect the guilty), taking the number of posters and dividing by the time during the day provided for poster viewing resulted in something absurd like 38 seconds per poster. The poster rooms were open all night, providing really the only time during which one could calmly read posters. We felt this wasn’t reasonable.

Even if you have a cutoff for abstract submission, some people will ignore it. There were rolling cutoffs for CS14 – a deadline for abstracts being considered for contributed talks (~2 months prior, by which we received ~300 of our ~400 abstracts, including talks), a deadline for being included in the printed abstract book (~1 month prior, which netted ~50 more by the advertised CS deadline, and ~50 [or placeholders] by the TPF deadline), and the practical deadline of the start of the conference (the last ~13 ). The last abstract we received was at 4:30pm on the Friday before the conference start; there were also people who just walked up with posters (maybe 5 or so?). In the end we had about 290 posters, in two sessions.


For CS14, our LOC members strongly recommended a particular vendor for poster boards – this particular company is indeed very competent. However, their boards really do end at 3 feet tall; many people brought posters that were 3 feet wide by 4 feet (or more) long, and as such curled off the bottom (or top) of the board. Some people jury-rigged something involving weights to help unroll the poster. We should have warned people that the posters really do need to be at most 3 feet long, or not curly.

In CS14, we initiated a “best poster” competition. We assembled a committee, most of the members of which were part of the SOC; we selected the committee to represent a range of fields, geographies, and genders. We gave the committee free rein to decide how many prizes to give out and their names. The committee had a hard time agreeing on standards, and felt quite stressed by the deadlines imposed by the fact that there were two poster sessions. We bought prizes (mostly Spitzer-themed) from the Caltech bookstore and the winners selected from the prize pool. While nearly everyone agreed that this basic concept was a good idea and should be continued at future meetings, there were numerous suggestions for improvement:

Assemble the committee earlier so they can discuss on email the standards they want to use and arrange a meeting time in advance (at least one, possibly two, members arrived slightly later than the rest and never caught up with the group).

Advertise this prize ahead of time to the poster authors and remind them to make sure to include “big picture” items, as one would for a proposal, to make the import of their conclusions clearer to people not in their specific subfield.

There could be one poster prize per topical area, to ease the comparison between fields.

Have just one poster session. Make sure the rooms are open late. The prizes could be a 5-minute presentation on the last day (last session?), and a

few pages in the published proceedings, not just on the CD or DVD full of poster submissions.


17 Media Relations

For more information, ideas about how to communicate news at conferences to the general public, contact your institution’s media relations office, who can work with you.

Be aware that currently, the budget for media to travel to science conferences is extremely limited, so it is very difficult to attract more than the local media to any events you may wish to host at a conference.

If you wish to have an event or briefing that may be of interest to the local media, that is a possibility. For example, in Pasadena, the Pasadena Star News has a robust and faithful astronomy reporter. The LA Times does not cover astronomy regularly, but will consider angles if they have a human interest aspect, or something of that ilk. Local TV is a possibility, but again you need some human interest, celebrity, etc. angle. You may also be able to attract local journalists/personalities to an event at the conference.

If there will be major science announcement being made at the conference, it is possible to coordinate a press release, or perhaps a media telecon, to be timed with the conference. (CS9 had TV crews and AP wire coverage.) Be aware that NASA requires accepted papers for press releases except at major conferences such as the AAS or DPS. Also note that if the science result is based on a Nature or Science paper, those journals have very strict media embargo deadlines that may not be able to be adjusted to correspond to the conference dates.

Other sorts of news communication products are possible: podcasts, video podcasts, web news, features. Don't automatically think that these forms of communications are inferior to press releases. In many cases, the audience for such communications has proved larger than e.g., the readership of the science pages of the New York Times.

If you wish to invite a politician/elected official to the event, that is also a possibility. Be aware that you can't do that during election season if the official is up for re-election. Otherwise, be sure to coordinate with your local government affairs department to pursue this type of opportunity.

It is also possible to arrange high-profile public events in association with the conference. Examples for a Pasadena-based conference may include an image unveiling at Griffith Observatory, or in the One Colorado public square.

18 Selection of the next site

The selection of the site for CS N+1 takes place during CS N, and the location is announced at the conference banquet. The SOC discusses where to hold the next meeting


at a dinner that takes place on Tuesday or Wednesday evening (during the meeting); representatives from each proposing team attend to make a brief presentation and answer questions. In order to have this discussion take place, applications for CS N+1 must be received in advance, usually about 6 weeks before the meeting, and distributed to the SOC.

For CS14, after the proposals were received, we held an SOC telecon to have an initial discussion. A product of this telecon was a list of additional questions for each proposer.

The SOC also expressed a strong desire to have another question added to the application concerning the scientific focus of the meeting. The point of the question is not to have the CS N+1 proposers provide a detailed description of the content of their plenary sessions – that presumably will be the function of their SOC if they are selected. Instead, the point of the question is to have the proposers indicate any major themes that they would like to emphasize (e.g. because that science topic is strongly represented at their institute, or because of some other special circumstance, such as a solar eclipse will occur at their site that year or their country includes the science center for a space telescope that will have just been launched prior to the meeting).

The SOC also found themselves asking several questions about the budgetary details from all of the proposing groups. Perhaps we need to request more detailed budget information, though it is hard for proposers to provide that sort of information without knowing for sure that they will get to host the meeting.

Our web page included the following instructions for CS15 proposers; applications were due October 1, 2006:

Potential hosts are invited to submit a proposal to the CS14 SOC to hold the next workshop, CS15. Please answer the questions below to the best of your ability. The proposals will be evaluated by the SOC prior to CS14, and you will be asked to make a presentation of your proposal at an SOC meeting during the CS14 workshop. The winning proposal will be announced at the CS14 banquet.

This meeting has certainly grown from the original small group of attendees at CS1, and now attracts about 300 scientists. It has become one of the (if not the) foremost meeting to discuss advances in cool stars. Attendees now expect features such as email access and banquets, in addition to the ever outstanding scientific results. Generally rooms are required for a plenary session, for breakout sessions, and a poster display area that could run to 200 posters. A group of dedicated people is needed to produce the Workshop. It has been traditional that the Chair of the SOC comes from the host institution.


Generally funds in excess of the registration fees from the participants are required to aid the attendance of some speakers, young postdocs, and graduate students. Support for the publication and group activities is also usually sought from outside sources. Such funds are obtained from the host institution, national resources, professional societies, and the commercial sector.

Please note that CS15 is slated to be a meeting outside of the United States.

Information on previous Cool Stars meetings is available.

Please submit the following information to [email protected] by October 1, 2006, with the subject header 'Cool Stars 15 Application':

1. Host Institution:2. Lead scientist(s):3. Name, address, email, fax:4. Proposed dates of meeting:5. Proposed site of meeting:6. Meeting/Facility considerations (Hotel, conference center, observatory?)7. Transportation considerations (Airports, public transportation, travel time, ease of access etc.):8. Rooming/Hotel considerations (Range of facilities/cost):9. Potential sources of financial support in addition to registration fees:10. Why should CS15 be held here?11. Anything else we should know:

19 Other practicalities during the meeting

As someone heavily involved in the meeting (at least the LOC or SOC chairs and deputy chairs), expect to spend the whole week at the meeting site, from dawn to dusk and beyond. Tell your family it’s just like you’re on travel and for them not to expect seeing you until it is over. You might even consider staying in the hotel yourself.

As LOC or SOC chair, don’t assign yourself any tasks. You’re there to be a leader, and to be an effective leader, you need to be available. Get a cell phone with a Bluetooth earpiece – walk around looking like the Borg and you’ll be able to field questions and give directions from anywhere.

Talks


Preload talks on laptops connected to projectors. Having presentation computers networked together would be very useful (not done for CS14) – plenty of speakers showed up moments before their talk, not realizing talks were being physically transferred via memory stick.

Provide appropriate viewers on the commonly used platforms. For CS14, this meant a Windows and Mac platform for each room, with Acrobat Reader and PowerPoint on each, and Keynote on the Macs was expected and unfortunately not provided. Other important components to include are relevant motion viewers (RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, Quicktime).

Provide a switch to go between the PC and the Mac computers with just a switch – we used using something called KVM Switch. The KVM stands for Keyboard Video Mouse. They make KVM switches in all shapes and sizes. The ones we used for the conference also include USB ports, and audio ports. We also used a USB powerpoint/keynote slide controller fob that would switch via USB also. Here are some similar solutions that are cheap. http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=956471 http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=1204678 Here is the one we used at the conference: http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=871181

Provide laser pointers, remote slide advance clickers. Head-wrapping microphones (a.k.a. “Britney Spears” mikes or “would you like

fries with that” mikes) have worked well at other conferences in addition to CS14. Providing the microphone is aligned properly to begin with, the microphone thus stays near the speaker’s mouth. Watch out for speakers with long hair and/or small heads as they tend to slide off.

Volunteers You need a small legion of student volunteers to staff the wide variety of tasks

that come up. You need a “crew chief” to direct said legion.

Networks Astronomers have high expectations for the quality of the network connection.

For reasons that are still totally opaque to us, no hotel we have yet encountered even has any grasp of the magnitude of the problem (how can it be that “regular business people” in even larger meetings than ours do not all use the network too, to the same degree??). You will max out the network capabilities of the hotel and be left gasping. Plan on being overloaded on day 1. Plan on getting your local network people heavily involved in the preparation process and plan on bringing your own hubs and network supplies, regardless of what the hotel thinks they can handle.

Food


Food is expensive at hotels. It will boggle your mind. Many people will regard the opening reception as a meal, so be sure to have substantial food available. People will complain unless both healthy and junk food are available at both the morning and afternoon breaks (e.g., fruit and juice along with muffins and pastries). Some SOC members have requested that beer and wine be available at the poster sessions, but astronomers are cheap and despite your expectations, do not, apparently, drink enough compared to the average population. At CS14, the hotel pulled the bar because we did not drink enough, and we had to pay extra to force them to set up a bar.

20 Proceedings

The conference series has now gotten big enough that it’s no longer particularly practical to let everyone have a few pages in the published book. Include a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM with the proceedings to allow for more contributions. Make sure you contract with a publishing company that makes its materials available through the NASA ADS service, since publications not included in ADS are essentially ignored. The allure (and cost savings) of ‘electronic-only’ publishing will be objected to by various constituents and is probably best avoided, at least for now, though to be sure, several meetings are now moving in that direction. Rapid publication is desired for relevance of proceedings.

For CS14, we were approached by at least 3 publishers offering to publish our proceedings. Several publishers recognize the value of the CS series and are willing to work with you to get what you want. CS14 went with ASP, who was more than happy to have us. CS13 published through ESA; ESA may be willing to publish future CS series for meetings held in Europe.

21 Summary and any other items of interest

In this section, we list a few items that stood out in our minds.

21.1CS14Note that some of this refers specifically to conferences hosted by IPAC, and some refers specifically to CS workshops.


21.1.1 CSW14 organizational timeline (for reference)

July '04 - Pasadena selected as CSW14 site Aug 15, '04 - Telecon with CSW13 SOC Chair re: SOC members October '04 - Key administrative support people identified January '05 - Conducted survey of potential venues for CSW14 March '05 - Sent invitations to people to join the SOC March '05 - Toured Hilton hotel and make tentative selection as site for CSW14 April '05 - Draft website constructed for internal comment April '05 - SOC members all selected April '05 - Internal discussion of main science themes for CSW14 April '05 - First LOC meeting April '05 - Email discussion with SOC of Hilton as venue April '05 - Hilton selected as venue Spring '05 - CSW14 website opened to "public" June '05 - Zeroth announcement for meeting sent to CSW13 email list Summer '05 - Sample CSW14 posters created and discussed Summer '05 - Began process of identifying excursions. Held discussions with

possible sites (made trips to sites). Aug. '05 - Email discussion with SOC members re: science themes Sept '05 - Initial version of selected poster created. Sept. '05 - Rough version of agenda for CSW14 created (internal to local SOC

representatives) Nov. '05 - Telecon with SOC to discuss draft meeting agenda (plenary session

topics; slots for splinters; etc.) Nov. '05 - Received first application to host CSW15 Nov. 05 - Selected poster design (though still tweak it for next month) Nov. '05 - First splinter session application received mid-Jan '06 - Held SOC telecon re: approval of meeting agenda and discussion of

invited speakers. end Feb '06 - Agreed on preferred invited speakers. Began contacting them April '06 - All but one or two invited speakers signed up May '06 - Fully functional version of website up and running (including system

for accepting registration and abstracts, etc.) May '06 - Banquet site selected and signed up June '06 - Splinter proposals selected August '06 - Applications for travel support reviewed and "winners" selected August '06 - Venue for SOC dinner identified and reserved. October '06 - Complete layout of how the posters will fit into the poster rooms. October '06 - Contributed talks selected. Others notified that they should create

posters instead.


21.1.2 SOC Duties

Determine science focus for meeting. Determine detailed meeting agenda (topics for plenary sessions and parallel

sessions, if any; select splinter sessions). Select invited speakers and contributed speakers. Determine if there will be a conference proceedings book and identify an editor

and other boundary conditions for the book. Solicit and select the site for the next CSW meeting.

21.1.3 LOC Duties

Work with meeting venue organization (in our case, the Hilton Hotel) to contract rooms for talks, posters, etc.

Work with hotel re: other logistics - food/coffee during breaks, reception. Work with hotel re: AV equipment, etc. Work with banquet site to negotiate details of the banquet. Set up the conference website. Identify the means to create and maintain an email list to use for communicating

with potential attendees. Identify the means to allow people to register for the meeting, submit abstracts,

pay registration fees, etc. Maintain the books for the meeting. Create a budget for the meeting and maintain it during the process. Find vendors for other conference needs (poster stands, workstations for the

internet cafe, etc.), and sign up those vendors to provide these services. Sign up a printer to print the abstract booklet. Identify the graphics person to create the conference poster and other needed

graphics (logos, etc.). Work with them to complete this task. Identify a publisher for the conference proceedings and work with them.

21.1.4 Joint SOC/LOC Duties

Identify the venue for where the meeting will be held. Identify the venue for where the banquet will be held. Identify the venue for where the SOC dinner will be held. Collect the poster abstracts into a format which can be printed into a book(let). Provide the collected abstracts to the printer.


21.1.5 Important recommendations and admonitions

Your meeting will eventually be the impetus for large sums of money to flow from your institute and the attendees to the hotel (or other facility) providing the site for the meeting, and to the restaurant hosting the banquet, and to other service providers. Negotiating with these places to get the best deal (or at least a good deal) and to get the services you need takes a skill set that you (the SOC or LOC chair) may not have. It is extremely important to identify someone in your organization who is good at this and to have them be the person who is the interface to these service providers. It is best to have a single such interface in order not to create confusion. It is also probably true that your university will not empower you to sign contracts with hotels and restaurants - make sure you know what the rules are and abide by them.

Someone needs to keep a professional budget for the meeting, both for the purposes of keeping track of income and expenditures and for the purpose of forecasting (e.g. to determine how much the registration fee should be). The LOC chair may be the person to maintain the budget; if he/she is not, then it should be someone with whom the LOC chair is in close contact.

If you are lucky, your university or science center will have discretionary funds which can provide a significant portion of the money needed to run the meeting. If you are not so lucky, you will need to apply for funding from local governments, the NSF, NASA, aerospace companies and other similar entities. The LOC and SOC chairs for previous meetings may be able to help you by providing copies of past applications for funding or contacts at funding agencies.

Your meeting will be a big burden on the administrative staff at your institute who have to help with the myriad tasks needed to manage the meeting (interactions with people asking for and receiving travel support; creating handouts for attendees; working with vendors and the hotel; doing the registration and user support during the meeting; etc.). Make sure you involve them in every step in the meeting organization so that they know what is happening and can allocate their resources well.

An important step in preparing for the meeting is to have all those involved sit down together well before (> 1 month) the meeting and step through each day and each event. Have all the necessary things been taken care of? Is each venue aware of what is planned for each day and each event?

21.1.6 Lessons learned

Try really hard to get the speakers to preview their talks on the presentation computer(s) and make sure the movies and symbols come out as expected.


Find out ahead of time what presentation software the speakers will use and make sure that they are present on the computers. (Keynote blindsided us.)

Make really sure each speaker (and chair, and “lieutenant”; see above) is familiar and comfortable with the microphones and laser pointers, etc.

Have the session chair not also be a speaker, but do assign a senior scientist (the chair?) to work with the speakers ahead of time to ensure a coherent presentation of material.

Have extra hand-held microphones and “runners” for questions, or place microphones in the aisles for people to line up and ask questions.

Make plenty of signs to direct people to the relevant rooms. Buy extra easels to set up the signs if necessary (CS14 used literally every easel owned by the hotel).

Worry about ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliance, or the equivalent in your country. Consult with lawyers ahead of time as to what question(s) we can legally ask ahead of time that translates to “do you need us to arrange separate transportation for you because you’re in a wheel chair?” Had we had but a few days’ notice, we could have accommodated much more easily someone who kind of blindsided us.

Worry about visas. Several people could not attend because they could not get a visa, apparently because we could not write them an invitation letter. JPL’s lawyers did not allow us to do this, assuring us that “this has never been a problem in the past.”

21.2CS13

21.3CS12

22 Appendix

Three separate xls spreadsheet files are available from our CS14 experience. (They did not import particularly cleanly into the Word environment, so they are separate files, sorry!)

cool stars, stellar systems, and the sun conference...

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