There are 4 afternoons of parallel sessions: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday,
with Wednesday afternoon free for socializing/excursion. Each afternoon full
session is divided into two parts:
BC = Before coffee break: 14:00-16:00
Coffee break:
16:00--16:30
AC = After coffee break: 16:30--18:30 [elasticity in end
time, say up to 30 minutes]
Some sessions with fewer talks have been designated as half sessions, either BC
or AC, sharing a single room one afternoon, in order to accommodate all the
sessions, some of which were large enough to be split into two afternoon
sessions on adjacent days (and one into 3 sessions).
A typical full parallel session has a single 4 hour afternoon time slot for the chair to divide up in speaker time units as he or she sees fit (giving reasonable face time to all accepted abstract submissions). When we received too many abstracts for a single session (both solicited by the chair and unsolicited independent submissions), we split them into 2 such sessions and when we received too few abstracts we combined sessions where appropriate and introduced half sessions. The thing to keep in mind is that the MG meetings try to give everyone a chance to make a verbal presentation if only for 5 minutes towards the end of the session so people get face recognition for meeting each other for personal exchanges if they have mutual interests. To get an idea of how time was divided up at MG12, go to the Parallel Session Schedule of the MG12 website, and you can click on one of the checkmarks to see the actual time schedule of any of the parallel sessions. Some had one or a few 35 minute talks and then the rest were 20 or 15 or 10 or even 5 depending on the circumstances. We also had some round table formats for more debate and exchange of views.
For MG13 we are going to implement poster sessions for presentations that won't fit in the 4 hour session, allowing registrants to choose poster presentations as well when they register. We will figure this out before the meeting takes place.
The pre-abstract-submission-deadline task of a chairperson is to line up a handful of people who are willing to make good contributions to the session AND URGE THEM TO TAKE A FEW MINUTES TO REGISTER (no advance fee payment required to register) and when convenient submit a title and abstract (which can be corrected later by emailing the meeting mailbox). Your own program document listing unregistered speakers is useless if we do not have the speaker titles and abstracts in our data base by June 1, so that they can be arranged from the data base to create the official program. We also need you to register yourself. Please help us with this simple act. Early registration also gives us a better idea of logistic planning.
Later in the spring of 2012 (JUNE) after the deadline for abstract submission, the chairperson will integrate all the abstracts together (which should include the people who have had advance contact from the chairperson) into a session program. The 4 hours of a single session may be divided up in unequal portions at the discretion of the chairperson. In the event that a very large number of abstracts are received, a session may be split into two sessions. Conversely, if too few abstracts are received, a session could be reduced to a half session or consolidated with another compatible session. With the number of parallel sessions now over 70, some coalescence must be expected, in which case we hope chairpersons can work together on the final program when such natural consolidations are made. This time Poster Sessions will allow overflow from the oral presentations.
At least one longer "Rapporteur" talk reviewing the topic is traditionally given, either by the chairperson or by someone chosen by the chairperson, and this contribution to the proceedings will have a long page length comparable to plenary speakers. The chairperson may also have a few longer talks depending on the circumstances, and the full session time may be awarded unequally at the discretion of the chairperson. [To put the timing into perspective, all plenary speakers will have 35 minutes for their talks.] However, the MG meetings have a tradition of giving everyone a chance to present their work, if only in a series of short summaries at the end of the session so that people can see their faces for later individual conversation if they are interested. The name of the designated "Rapporteur" speaker (with the session name) should be forwarded to the Meeting email address so that the database can properly identify these contributors to the proceedings.
The MG meetings could not function without the active participation of so many people, but it does not have deep pockets. Every one who has some source of travel funds should exercise that option first. For those who need more help from nations that have national science organizations to which one can apply, this is the next option for travel funding.
Some limited outside funding and shifting of conference fees can support some participants but this is traditionally used for participants from less economically fortunate countries. As a rule at the MG Meetings, parallel session invited speakers are expected to cover their own fees and travel expenses with the exception of IUPAP funds that are reserved for people from Eastern Europe and developing countries. In cases of absolute need an attempt will be made to extend some funding.
If you yourself or someone at your institution can create a simple webpage to post information about your session, this would be welcomed. Just send the URL to the conference email address.
We will also need a head shot for our roster of parallel session chairpersons, as for MG12, together with a short summary of your session.
After the meeting has ended, the chairpersons may exercise some flexibility
in monitoring the agreed upon page limits of participants and invited speakers,
and remind speakers to submit their contributions.
http://www.icra.it/MG/mg13/proceedings.htm
After the deadline for receipt of manuscripts for the proceedings, each chairperson should look over the PDF contributions in his or her session on-line for quality control purposes, excluding papers whose contents do not meet international conference proceedings standards by not checking them to be included in the proceedings AND notifying the proceedings editors of these cases.
To expedite publishing of the invited plenary and rapporteur articles, an agreement was made with the journal IJMPD to referee and publish them as they are submitted to that journal with a tentative submission deadline of December 31, 2012. These together with other articles in this category submitted directly to us will also be published by World Scientific in the usual 3 volumes of proceedings with the remaining parallel session articles (3 pages for normal presentations, 2 pages for poster presentations) with a submission deadline of February 28, 2013. We need to be notified by email of the chairperson's designated rapporteur name to manage this process.
Details about IJMPD submission
are as follows. The preferred manuscript delivery for this journal is LaTeX
using their journal macros:
http://www.worldscientific.com/page/ijmpd/submission-guidelines
Obviously the paper must conform to the standards of the journal. When
submitting an article, one must choose for the article type:
"Research paper" or "Review paper" as appropriate
and in the "Enter Comments" section insert: "Invited MG13 proceedings article".
A copy of the uploaded zipped file should be sent to
MG13@icra.it with the subject header: "IJMPD
submitted MG13 invited article by XXXX", where XXXX is the lead author name.
Questions can always be directed to this email.