-- LyndeleVonSchill - 2011-08-11

Attendees: Tony, Nuria, Mark, Carol, Amy, Lyndele, Claire, Rodriguez, Crystal, Dave Wilner, Paul Ho, Sienny

Minutes

1. Scientific sessions: we have a rough list of sessions and now we need to think a little more about their content and format. Because of the very broad coverage, it is hard to cover each subject in great details, but I am sure we'd like to touch key aspects in the sessions. Each session is up to 3.5 long, and we can have two invited (30+10) talks and up to 4-5 (15+5) contributed talks plus a 30 min coffee break. That is with about a total of 12 invited talks (in addition to the intro invited talks) we would like to cover the key aspects of the various systems in both theory and observations.

  • Suggestion to make coffee breaks longer as 30 mins may be too rushed
  • Carol noted that we may not be covering the topic of winds from supernovae in galaxies-superwinds very well.
  • Claire: we need to include microquasars, GRBs & other exotics in the intro session

SOC ==> Comments on above?

  • Revisiting the question of having the 4 facility talks up front or distribute them between sessions, to avoid the intro session being too heavy. Agreed that 15-20 min talks focusing on capabilities, not science, is fine for the intro session.
  • Overview science intro talks: there are two suggestions for how to approach this:
  1. Sienny: At this point, from our previous exchanges, we tentatively divided up the subjects into three groups, each will be given by a well-respected person who could present the subject to other communities, followed by one overview observational talk. We can do a theory/observation pair for each of the group, and that would give 6 intro talks, if we want. Of course to balance the number of intro talks, we can simply have two intro observational talks followed by two intro theory talks as what people in earlier exchanges proposed/favored. The two observational intro talks can cover stellar phenomena in one of them and extra galactic phenomena in the other (including the topics mentioned by Carol and Claire). These may be closest to the current status in our google document (with re-arranged topics/order), along with their suggested speakers (and most people seem to be happy about) although we can work out backup names.
  2. Carol: Attempt to provide some guiding synthesis between the science fields by having only two intro talks - one each for observations and theory - and ask each speaker to compare and contrast the 3 phenomena in the different object categories. Leave the more detailed subject overviews to later invited talks. Obviously we'd need a cross-discipline pundit for each of these challenging talks.
==> SOC to comment / vote on these 2 ideas, or suggest alternative.

2. Panel discussions: we could have a panel discussion at the end of each day (e.g. 5:10 pm-6:00 pm) or at early evenings. It depends on how/when we'd like to hold our panel/discussion sessions. We would like to discuss a little rough format of the sessions and their panel members/moderators.

  • There was consensus that the panel sessions not go beyond 6pm. There was consensus that the panel discussions are a good plan, and that the goal is to stimulate deeper cross-pollination between the fields and between theory & observations, and to clarify questions from the talks that people not expert in that discipline may have. Strong moderators required. Their roles are as important as invited speakers.

3. Poster sessions: the LOC has proposed two early evenings of poster viewing sessions replacing our standard banquet. If we prefer this suggestion, we'd need to arrange the panel/discussions at the end of day, and longer one in the mid-afternoon of the 4th day. Otherwise, we'd need to come up with alternative plans.

  • Tony: proposed: same posters up throughout workshop, two evenings of heavy appetizers and drinks.

  • General consensus agreement wtih Tony's suggestion.

4. The invited speakers: we have gotten a fair list of names that we can choose from, and have more good speakers than we can have slots for. So I'd like to suggest we prioritize the topics, especially the standard topics (averaged over time) and ``hot topics" that are timely. We could perhaps also give higher priority to topics that are better for our synergy programs for those featured telescopes in our invited talks, and leave the rest for our contributed talks. Another way of course is to go for one more invited talk in each session but that would reduce the number of contributed talks--I am not sure if we want that. These are for our discussion

  • Consensus to keep the number of invited to 2 per session. There is a need to flesh out the intended topics.

==> SOC members to write short summaries (couple sentences) on what specific topics they would like to see covered in each session. Fine to limit it to your area of expertise, or also write what you'd like to learn from a session outside your area. What are the hot questions we want to address? In what specific areas do we want to explore similarities/differences between the object classes?

5. Current list of speakers, subjects, and rough plan of the sessions on our google document: https://docs.google.com/a/tiara.sinica.edu.tw/document/d/1G8zVhGaLKVNt5X5eC4PJMnrORUPpOiMXQbogFo3IULU/edit?hl=en_US

  • Sienny – Invited speakers – put ideas in writing. Seed idea: do part of a system in a session, and rotate focus throughout conference. Cover each system by features. What specifically should be covered? Some hot topics can be covered in some sessions, more traditional items in other sessions.

==> Sienny to flesh this plan out with some specifics - what specific topics / objects types in which session.

==> Others: please contribute specific ideas for session plans.

Invited speakers to be considered based on the improved session plans.

Feel free to suggest more invited speaker names

6. LOC matters: the LOC will discuss the current status and projected schedule etc.

  • Tony requested a vote on an idea to switch the half day from Tues (last day) to Sunday in order to do something fun on Sunday afternoon after the panel discussion; eg, visit a vineyard.

    • no consensus: one vote for the Sunday fun event.

==> SOC please comment and vote, LOC may need to provide further details. (One potential concern is to allocate enough time for the special topics).

Lyndele will create doodle poll to allow SOC to provide guidance for LOC on the following:

  • Should we offer an honorarium to 'VIPs' (eg, Phil Puxley)?

  • In order to provide support for students, should we build into the registration fees the ability to offer students registration at 1/2 price and hotel room at 1/2 price?

  • Do we want a poster?

  • Do we want swag (eg, water bottle, coffee mug, tote bag)?

==> SOC - please respond to these LOC questions in the doodle polly (when sent). The LOC may provide additional information there.
Topic revision: r5 - 2011-08-15, CarolynHunsinger
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