Proposed Talks Committee Guidelines

1
Proposed Talks Committee Guidelines

• M. Hebert, E. Hungerford, T.J. Liu

2
Where We Are Now

• We have a committee in place consisting of
  myself, Ed Hungerford, and T.J. Liu, following an
  Institution Board election in January
• We have had three presentation opportunities to
  consider thus far
• PANIC02 in Osaka this fall
• NuFact02 in London July 1-6th
• Topical Seminar on Frontier of Particle Physics
  2002 Neutrinos and Cosmology in Beijing August
  20-25th
• We have succeeded in landing one speaker thus far
• Hebert for the PANIC02 talk
• We do not have any explicit rules regarding
  exactly how the committee, or the speakers it
  approves, are supposed to function

3
What Guidelines Do We Need?

• I think in general everybody understands the
  purpose of a talks/presentations committee
• The problems arise in the details
• Our goal is to head these problems off at this
  early stage by establishing a charge to the
  committee and a written set of operating
  procedures that both the committee and the
  speakers will follow
• This talk presents the first draft of these
  guidelines so that we can get your feedback,
  incorporate it, and complete this task in the
  relatively near future

4
Committee Membership and Term

• The committee consists of three members of the
  MECO collaboration, elected by majority vote of
  the Institution Board
• Each member serves a three year, renewable term
• One new member is elected to the committee each
  year
• Note for the moment TJ, Ed, and I dont know who
  is up for reelection next January.
• Note also that we have all volunteered to be the
  short timer

5
Draft Charge to the Committee I

• The committee is constituted to solicit
  presentations that widely disseminate information
  about MECO and its physics, to select
  collaboration members to make these
  presentations, and to ensure that the material
  presented is drawn from the collaboration-approved
  set of figures, tables, and parameters.
• This simple statement raises a number of
  questions
• Exactly how do we solicit speakers? addressed
  in the SOP section
• Is the committee the final arbiter of contentions
  over talks? again in the SOP section
• What constitutes collaboration-approved
  materials, who approves them, and where are they
  kept? addressed at the end of this talk
• How do we ensure what is being presented? again
  in the SOPs

6
Draft Charge to the Committee II

• The committee shall attempt to distribute
  presentations equally among all collaboration
  members in good standing. In selecting speakers
  the committee will give preference to
  collaborators
• having a more detailed knowledge of the subject
  of interest,
• whose seniority is appropriate for the level of
  the conference or presentation,
• whose career prospects will be enhanced by giving
  a particular presentation.
• The aim here is to say that we will both share
  the wealth and look out for young people in
  particular to further their job prospects
  whenever possible
• This raises a question that is beyond the scope
  of this committee, namely what determines if a
  collaboration member is in good standing?

7
Draft Charge to the Committee III

• Although the collaboration rules for inclusion on
  the author list of any paper are established
  outside of this committee, the committee shall
  implement these rules by recommending the
  appropriate author list for any MECO publication
  to the Executive Committee
• This places the committee in the judicial role of
  interpreting the author list rules
• Clearly this begs the question of what are the
  rules for inclusion on the MECO author list? This
  needs to be addressed as part of the what is a
  collaborator in good standing debate.

8
Proposed Committee SOPs I

• The committee makes its recommendations to the
  Executive Committee. Unless the Executive
  Committee requests a review within a period of
  time TBD, the recommendation is approved.
• A collaboration member is free to present
  seminars and colloquia at universities without
  contacting the committee. However, the committee
  must review presentations at all conferences,
  workshops, and national laboratories in advance.
• If a collaboration member is specifically
  requested by invitation for a presentation that
  is solely about MECO, rather than as part of a
  broader review of the field, the committee will
  still determine who will give the presentation,
  although preference will be given to the
  requested individual.

9
Proposed Committee SOPs II

• The committee will announce all opportunities for
  talks to the collaboration as a whole in order to
  solicit nominees. Operationally this means
  broadcast e-mail and/or in collaboration meeting
  talks like this one
• Nominations for speakers will be accepted for
  consideration from members of the Institution
  Board this is to ensure that whatever
  requirements for giving talks within that
  institution have been met by the nominee
• Nominees who have recently made presentations
  will have lower priority than those who have not

10
Proposed Rules for Speakers

• Speakers will provide electronic copies of all
  presentations, both in draft form to review in
  advance, and the final version to be archived on
  the MECO web site.
• Speakers will present a practice talk to the
  committee and other interested collaboration
  members via a tele- or videoconference several
  days before the scheduled presentation date.
• Presentations must represent the MECO design,
  capabilities, and results only by material
  approved by the collaboration. An up-to-date list
  of approved presentation material and electronic
  forms for all of that material will be available
  on the MECO web site in the Internal Documents
  section.
• There is a strong preference for PowerPoint as
  the electronic talk format of choice to allow
  easy sharing of individual slides in multiple
  talks.

11
Unresolved Issues

• We require some rules stipulating what
  constitutes a collaborator in good standing
• A corollary to this is that we need a clear
  statement of the authorship rules
• The Plot Blessing Committee
• In the long term this will either be the purview
  of the Executive Committee or a separate
  committee elected by the Institution Board
• In the interim I propose that we consider at
  least the CDR, the proposal, and the TDR as
  approved materials (since they are already in the
  public domain) and we decide on a subset of the
  most up-to-date Technical Memos as viable source
  material as well.
• If the material isnt written up anywhere, I
  think we can safely conclude it is NOT going to
  be blessed

12
Achieving Closure

• My hope would be to get at least a portion of
  these guidelines agreed to in the IB meeting this
  afternoon so that we can exercise them on the
  upcoming talks
• I would hope that whatever remaining
  uncertainties there are can be wrapped up so that
  we can get a complete set of guidelines decided
  upon by the next IB meeting
• As with any part of the Management Plan, we can
  amend/alter it as needed down the road
• I am eager to get this done soon because we will
  have a much larger spectrum of problems to deal
  with once the project is approved. Anything that
  we can decide now, we should.