ADASS Program Organizing Committee

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Local Organizing Committee Planning Details

This document is a collection of notes and advice from experience gained from putting together prior ADASS conferences.

Dates and Duration

Traditionally ADASS has been held in early to late fall, with dates as early as mid-September and as late as mid-November. (See www.adass.org for specific dates.) Any time in that range would be ok, provided it avoids major holidays and conferences that have a large potential overlap with the ADASS audience. Often the hotel or other venue will impose even more restrictions on dates.

The duration of the conference is set by the POC, but generally the main conference takes 3 full days, usually begining on a Monday. The day prior to the conference is often used for special events, such as tutorials, tours of local sights, and the opening reception in the evening. This planning has the advantage that attendees can begin their travel on a Saturday, which often results in lower airfares. On occasion a tag-along meeting will be planned on the day following the conference.

Advertising

Beyond creating links from the adass.org Web site, the conference should at a minimum be advertised on the International Astronomy Meetings List at http://cadcwww.hia.nrc.ca/meetings/. The AAS Newsletter draws its entries from here, I believe. Meeting announcements can be sent to the adass.org list server, at adass-announce@adass.org. This list contains ~900 names, including all who have ever registered for an ADASS conference and the addresses of a large number of people who have published a paper recently on astronomical data analysis. E-mail addresses for the conference registrants should be updated on adass.org periodically, so that specific meeting announcements sent to adass-conference@adass.org will reach the intended audience.

Expected Attendance

Attendance is typically 280 when ADASS is held in the US, and about 220 when held outside. Attendance is also strongly affected by the proximity of major astronomical centers, such as in Boston or Tucson. A lot of the reason for lower attendance when ADASS was hosted by CADC/DAO (1993) and ESO (1997) is that it is often easier for astronomers and engineers outside the US to get funding for foriegn travel. This is obviously not the ideal situation, but it is a factor.

Budget

Budgets have run from $65,000 to $105,000, mostly depending upon the locale. Often the Local Organizing Committee (LOC) will select specific dates to avoid the most expensive seasons. At least in the US, it is difficult to factor out the cost of the "facility" from the cost of, e.g., coffee breaks since the hotel contracts are set largely upon the expected number of "room-nights" of occupancy and other factors, and the cost of arranging catering and other services is at some level artificial. The budget obligations include the cost of one copy of the proceedings for each attendee.

On the other side of the balance sheet, the LOC must plan the budget for the current year; the (legal) responsibility for the contracts lies with the hosting institution. The LOC needs to coordinate with the POC to set the registration fees such that all the anticipated costs are covered, with an appropriate contingency. In most years the other sponsoring organizations (NOAO, NRAO, STScI, SAO, etc.) that are represented on the POC will each contribute between $1000 and $5000 US to defray conference costs. In addition, we request support from governmental funding agencies, such as NASA and NSF in the US. Finally, the POC has a fund, which is managed by NOAO, that is used to apply excess funds (if any) from one conference to the next, or is used to cover unanticipated cost overruns for a given year. Generally there has been little difficulty in funding ADASS.

However, there are some difficulties when ADASS is not held in the US. Specifically, it is not allowable for some US federal or quasi-federal organizations (NASA, NSF, and SAO in particular) to sponsor conferences that are not held on US soil. To overcome this difficulty, the POC has recently begun paying the cost of the proceedings (roughly $14,000 US) directly from the "carry-over" fund, since the volume is produced by the ASP Conference Series, which is US-based. Also, it should be possible for European organizations to provide an institutional contribution, particularly when ADASS is held in Europe.

Balance Sheet

The following items should be included in the budget. All amounts are in $US.

Institutional Contributions

Planning Milestones

The following is a guideline for the events leading up to a typical ADASS conference.

Copyright © 2001 The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Last updated 2002-Mar-18