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First ICHEP 2022 IAC meeting
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Description
Zoom link:
https://cern.zoom.us/j/5750383975?pwd=a3Z0Y3A0MHpVbUx6ZkJKdFhXbUdkZz09
Meeting ID: 575 038 3975
Passcode: 1234
Minutes of the ICHEP2022 IAC meeting, 17/11/2021
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This is the first meeting of the International Advisory Committee of the ICHEP2022 Conference.
The indico site with the agenda and the presentation can be found here: https://agenda.infn.it/event/29046/
At the beginning of the meeting the two chairs of the Local Organising Committee, Paolo and Lorenzo, thanked the members of the IAC for accepting to be involved in the organisation of this edition of the conference that presents extra challenges due to the growing uncertainties for the evolution of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Paolo showed the status of the organisation and the timeline for the next months (response to comments are marked with -->).
The main points follow below, see attached slides for details.
- The conference venue is located in the "Fiera district" ~ 2.5 Km from Bologna center and well connected with the railway station (1.5 Km) and the international airport (6 Km).
- The program is the traditional ICHEP one with three days of parallel and three days of plenary sessions with Sunday in the middle dedicated to satellite meetings.
- The conference will be in "mixed" format, with participation both in person and online. This format, recommended by IUPAP, is the only possible option given the uncertainty on the Covid-19 pandemic. The online participation will require a reduced fee.
- The web site with basic information and growing content is available at www.ichep2022.it
- The Local Organising Committee involves ~ 70 people of the INFN and the Universities of Bologna and Ferrara. It is organised in working groups and meets regularly every two weeks since last December.
- The conference fees are listed in slide 9, the fees for students (up to PhD) are half the regular ones and the
proposed fee for online participation is 200 Euros (100 Euros for students).
The lunches have been disentangled from the fees, a package of six lunches is available for 100 Euros, the cost of the Gala Dinner is 70 Euros.
The fees will cover the welcome reception, the coffe breaks, local wine & food at the poster session, the publication
of the proceedings and some other services that are listed separately in slide 12 (thanks to Giulia Zanderighi for having noted that, to be clarified also on the web site) as extras: bus transportation, child care, safety measures against Covid-19
- Scientific program (slide 10):
================================
ICHEP 2020 program has been used as starting point, only few minor changes have been made, the most relevant being the shift of the detector upgrades for HL-LHC from future facilities (track 13) to the present detectors (track 12).
We received requests to expand the session on Computing and data handling (track 14) since CHEP 2022,
which is the reference conference for the computing community, has been cancelled.
There was a bit of discussion on this point. The major concern being the fact that the traditional balance of the ICHEP scientific program should not be altered.
--> The LOC completely agree on this observation, the proposed possibility is to meet this need accommodating
one more simultaneous session (we should have enough space to accomodate 11 sessions in parallel) providing
a longer computing session without affecting the rest of the program.
Chris Parkes supports the request for an expanded computing session addressing a concern of the LHC experiments.
We propose to have 4 to 6 conveners for each session, one of the conveners being a LOC member.
Dmitri Denisov commented about the large number of conveners.
--> For some sessions we expect a very dense program and a large number of abstracts both experimental and theoretical. In these cases we think that 6 is an adequate number also in line with the previous ICHEP edition.
Action items on the Scientific Program
======================================
- We propose to collect your comments and observations on the Scientific Program by 24/11/2021 and finalise it soon afterwards.
- For the session conveners we propose to collect your nominations for possible candidates by 1/12/2021, in order to be able to start sending invitation immediately after and have a complete list before the Christmas holidays.
Timeline (slide 11)
===================
- There was some discussion on the proposed deadline for the definition of the speakers list (April) that seems
too early for the LHC experiments.
--> Indeed for the big experiments we will define the talks assigned to them and then to wait for the speakers names from the collaborations, nevertheless for all the other cases (smaller experiments, theoretical talks, ...), it would be good to have the list well in advance considering, especially for people coming from outside Europe, the time needed to get the VISA and possible extra bureaucracy due to Covid-19 restrictions.
Other points raised in the discussion following the presentation:
=========================================================================
- Request of clarification about the Public Lecture, is it for the general public or for the conference participants?
--> We plan to organise both a public outreach event in Italian for the general public and one or two public lectures by
eminent personalities for the conference participants on complementary topics with respect to the typical ICHEP ones.
- Some concerns (from Young-Kee Kim and others) have been raised about the hybrid format. Past experiences showed that organisation of hybrid conferences is not an easy task, in particular the needs for in person or remote participation are very different and trying to satisfy both imply a lot of extra effort for the organisation.
--> We are aware of this issue and we surely cannot afford the organisation of two parallel and completely different
channels for in presence and remote participation. We are still confident to have a significant in presence participation
(the threshold is ~ 600 people, below this number we probably need to switch to full online format).
Our strategy is hence focused on favouring the in person participation whenever possible. Regarding the remote participation we plan to organise zoom connections for all the sessions allowing remote presentations with a special attention to the time-zone of the speaker. All the sessions will be recorded so that people can follow the talks at anytime. We could also improve the interactive participation of people from remote using dedicated chats for offline clarifications/questions to the speakers.
- Some comments about the difficulty to follow remotely the poster session.
--> We have investigated some of the tools used in past online conference to improve the interactivity between participants and poster presenters. This is something that requires extra effort for the organisation and will be studied further, also in case of a substantial remote participation or in the unfortunate case of
a fully online event.
- Other comments about the fees for remote participation. In particular Chris Parkes observed that they are higher in comparison to other conferences and there were also comments about the fact that people from uncomfortable time-zones could be discouraged to register. Rupert Leitner commented that the proposed fees are reasonable being just a small fraction of the cost for in person participation.
--> As previously stated we set the amount for the remote participation with the aim to favour in person participation, if possible. Of course we will pay special attention to people coming from geographical areas where the pandemic situation prevents the possibility to participate in person.
Our idea is to apply a strong fee reduction (half fee) or even a total waiver of the fee for these situations.
- There were some suggestions, from Stan Bentvelsen and others, in order to add extra value to the in presence participation. One possibility could be the organisation of round tables to create occasions for common discussion.
Zdenek Dolezal observed that this was successfully done at the last online edition of ICHEP in Prague.
It is not easy to find the time slots in a dense program, maybe part of the lunch time break can be used for this.
--> Useful suggestion, we will think carefully about this.
There are minutes attached to this event.
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