Duties of Workshop Organizers

While there is a lot of flexibility and a lot of variation between IMA workshops, the most typical workshop runs about 5 days and involves about 40 paid participants. In addition to these, there are commonly around 25 other participants, including long-term visitors to the IMA, postdocs, local and self-financed participants. There are typically 3 to 4 talks a day and some other organized activities such as poster sessions and planned discussions. Most IMA workshops include "Second Chances" discussion sessions at the end of the day when the issues raised during the days talks are revisited. Informal, unscheduled discussion and interaction are also an essential part of IMA workshops and it is important to leave adequate time for this.

Key tasks of workshop organizers, to be done during the academic year two years in advance of the program:

• Specify exact title and dates for workshop, and perhaps a rough day-by-day plan.
• Provide a one- to two-paragraph description of the scientific content of the workshop suitable for posting on the web. This should serve to 1) help an invitee decide whether to accept, 2) help others to decide if they want to attend, 3) give funding agencies and others a view of the value of our activities, and 4) remain as part of a permanent record of the workshop. It should make clear what the application areas relevant to the workshop are, and what the relevant areas of mathematics are.
• Choose the participants and speakers. For each workshop designate 50-70 people to invite as paid participants (aiming for 40-55 acceptances). These should explicitly include the workshop organizers. Assuming the standard 50 minute talks plus discussion, 20 of the invitees should be designated as speakers (aiming for 15-18 acceptances). If the organizers wish, some participants may be designated as backup speakers, perhaps keyed to particular first choice speakers. The participant list should be sent to the IMA at least 13 months preceding the workshop. The IMA is committed to actively seeking diversity among its participants in both gender and ethnicity. It is expected that the list of participants reflects these priorities and participants from under-represented groups should be flagged on the participant list.

Most of these decisions are made through email discussion among the workshop organizers and via one or two teleconferences arranged through the IMA.

Other responsibilities:

• Throughout the process of invitations, acceptances, final schedule, etc., be responsive to email queries from the IMA.
• Decide whether an IMA volume is an appropriate outcome of the workshop (or perhaps two or three workshops). IMA volumes are published by Springer when they offer something of wide interest not readily available: for example, well written tutorial or survey material in a new or rapidly developing area. If so, one or more organizers should be designated as editors of the volume.
• All workshop organizers should be in attendance for the entire workshop.

Support from the IMA