ISCB-SC:pubs:10rules
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ISCB-SC:pubs:10rules Ten Simple Rules for Organising a Successful Scientific Event: Our Experience Organising Successful Scientific and Educational Events for Students in the Computational Biology Community (while operating on a low budget). Manuel Corpas*, Nils Gehlenborg and Sarath Chandra Janga (* To whom correspondence should be addressed) PreambleMore and more scientific career articles [1] are converging on the need for students and researchers to know how to successfully organise a scientific meeting. Scientific meetings are at the heart of the scientist's professional life, since they provide an invaluable opportunity for learning, networking and brainstorming new ideas. In addition, meetings need to be enjoyable experiences that add exciting breaks to the usual routine in the lab. The International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) Student Council [2] is the young members' section of ISCB that focuses on the organisation of activities and events to facilitate the scientific development of its members. From our experience in organising the Student Council Symposium [3, 4], a satellite meeting of an ISCB-related mainstream conference [5], and other scientific events, we ourselves have learnt a great deal about aspects currently under-catered for in the usual academic curricula. We argue that the experience of organising events by students has immense value for the development of the future scientist; many skills are exercised, including organisational, managerial, team work effort, etc. All of these skills are important assets that make all the difference to a successful scientific career. We have grouped the ten simple rules for organising a successful scientific event into three categories: before the conference (six rules), during the conference (two rules) and after the conference (two rules).
Before the Conference
Planning a conference should be both a learning experience and an enjoyable activity. We recommend a minimum planning time that ranges from nine months to up to a year, depending on the size of your event, taking into account that the bigger conference, the greater the planning time required. Allow plenty of time to select and reserve your venue, for your attendees to book their flights early (and therefore cheaply) and for the submission and review of material to be presented. High-profile keynotes especially will require many months advance notice in order to find a space in their busy schedules.
Sponsors are a great source of income together with your attendants' registration fees. To increase the chances of being sponsored by industry, write them a clear proposal stating what the money will be spent on and what they get in return. You may also want to offer them some time for industry talks or demos as a way of attracting more sponsors. Make sure you first approach the sponsors that match your interest topics the closest. If they say they are not interested this year, keep their contact details as they might be able to sponsor you in future events. Approach them sooner rather than later in any case. The cost of your conference will be proportional to the capacity of the venue; therefore, a good estimation of the number of attendants can tell you a good estimate of your costs. You will need to include meals, coffee breaks etc. together with the actual cost of renting your venue. Additional costs might include travel fellowships, publication costs of proceedings in a journal and awards for outstanding contributors. All these issues will determine how much you need to charge your participants to attend.
When choosing a topic for your conference, it is important to have in mind the interests of your target audience. Make sure that you have a sufficiently wide range of areas, without being too general. The greater the number of topics covered, the more likely people are to come, but the less time you will have to focus on a particular subject matter. Emerging areas can attract greater interest, so try to include them in your program as much as possible; let your audience decide their preferred topics if you have the opportunity to ask them.
If this is your first conference, it needs to be as far apart from established conferences as possible, to lessen competition. Alternatively, you may want to organise your event around a main conference, in the form of a satellite meeting or Special Interest Group (SIG). Teaming up with mainstream conferences may increase the chances of attracting more people (especially if you have not organised one before) and also save you a great deal of administrative work. If you decide to do it on your own, you should consider the accessibility of your location, how easy it is to travel there, whether it has an interested community locally and finally, whether it has cultural/turistic attractions. Turist resorts may offer the possibility of making your conference a holiday, so more people may be attracted to come to visit, especially if accommodation is not too expensive. Cheaper accommodation and cheaper airfares to your destination are always a plus.
A conference is a place for people wanting to share and exchange ideas. Having many well known speakers will raise the demand of your event but this has to be balanced with enough time for presentation of submitted materials. We found that a of mix senior and junior scientists works best. Young researchers may be more enthusiastic and inspiring for students, while top senior scientists will be able to present a more complete perspective of your field. Allow plenty of time for socialising too; breaks and meals are ideal occassions for meeting potential collaborators and fostering networking with peers.
You do not need to master all skills needed for the successful organisation of your meeting, but the organising committee should cover most of them. You might want to separate the areas of responsabilities among your helpers depending on their interests and availability of time. Some potential responsabilities you may be able to delegate are: 1) contents and design of website; 2) promotion materials and marketing; 3) finance and administration 4) fundraising; 5) reviews of submitted material; 6) local organisation issues; 7) programme and speakers; 8) awards. Your organising committee should be large enough to handle all the above but not too large, avoiding free loaders. It is invaluable to have a local organising committee; they will be able to involve local institutions, speakers and companies. Local organisations may also help you with administrative tasks, dealing with registration of attendees and finding suitable accommodation around the venue. During the Conference
It is crucial that everyone helping to orgainse the event becomes familiarised with the venue. Make sure you have inspected all the facilities and the necessary materials for presenters: poster boards, pointers, a working computer, projectors, etc. Only then is it advisable to distribute responsabilities to the helpers: helping at the registration table, carrying the microphones during sessions, recording if you have the equipment, organising and managing power-point presentations, introducing the speakers, etc.
You need to have a contingency plan ready if something goes wrong, especially if you need to make last minute decisions. We recommend that you have at hand a list of the all names of the organisers, their mobile phone numbers and their specific duties. Also have at hand the names and contact information of caterers, building managers, administrative personnel, technicians and the main conference organiser if your event is part of another conference. It is also important that you have a designated meeting point where a member of the organisation is going to be avaliable at all times or where helpers may find someone to ask. After the Conference
This is important for you as the organiser, particularly if you are planning to organise future events. If you had evaluation sheets given to your audience for feedback, make this information publicly accessible through your website. Evaluations may help you improve the focus of your conference and will let you know if there are issues that you were not aware of, or things that people did not like. Get your submitted materials ready for publication in a journal, bearing in mind that this may cost money depending on the journal. Upload onto the website photos and videos (if you have any) and post the names of the people who have received awards and travel fellowship recipients. Always give credit where credit is due: recognise contributions by sponsors, speakers, organising committee, etc. Giving some simple gifts to your keynotes will leave them a good impression. You might need their help for future events.
Apart from reminding them of a (hopefully) memorable event, it is useful to inform delegates about the things that have happened since the conference ended. By then videos and photos will have been uploaded, related articles published and announcements about your next conference will be ready if you are brave enough to repeat the experience! ConclusionsWe have presented here a set of guidelines and suggestions for the organisation of a scientific event. Although our experience comes from catering to the student community in the field of Computational Biology, we believe that these principles are valid for any scientific event, regardless of their target audience or topic. We have both organised satellite meetings associated to a mainstream conference (Student Council Symposium at ISMB [6]) and helped the organisation of standalone events (BioSysBio [7]). As we have shown, a wide range of skills are required for the successful organisation of a scientific event. We believe that knowing how to organise scientific events should be part of the educational experience of the developing scientist as well as a distinctive mark of a successful scientific career. AcknowledgementsWe would like to acknowledge the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) for their support towards the organisation of the Student Council Symposiums, in particular BJ Morrison-McKay, Suzy Smith and Steven Leard. MC would like to thank especially Phil Bourne and Mike Gribskov, who, while doing an internship at Bourne's lab (summer 2003), let MC put forward the proposal for the creation of the Student Council. Thanks to Michal Linial and Rita Casadio (our liaisons at the ISCB Board of Directors), Burkhard Rost (the ISCB President), and all the ISCB Board of Directors for being so supportive of our work at the Student Council. We are also grateful to all the Student Council leadership and current and past Student Council members for their enthusiasm and hard (unpaid) work. We would not have done much without your help. References
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