PARA 2008 Information for Minisymposia Organizers Workshop on State-of-the-Art in Scientific and Parallel Computing May 13-16, NTNU, Trondheim, Norway

Note: Overall deadline for minisymposia (MS)extended abstracts are due on Mach 10, but deadlines/requirements may also be set locally by the organizers with approval from the Program Committee Chair. Check with your MS organizer(s) for details.

The following are our guidelines adopted from SIAM's guidelines for minisymposia:

Guidelines for Preparing a Minisymposium Proposal

• What is a Minisymposium?
• Organizing a Minisymposium
• Preparation of the MS Overview

What is a Minisymposium?

A minisymposium (MS) is a session of 4-12 coordinated presentations on a single topic of substantial current interest and importance in mathematics and its applications. It is normally 2-6 hrs long including breaks. Each speaker has twenty minutes for presentation, including 2-5 minutes for discussion.

In conducting the minisymposium, the session organizer should provide an overview of the minisymposium, introduce the speakers, and provide an opportunity for discussion among the speakers and the audience. The organizer may also be the chair and one of the speakers.

Organizing a Minisymposium

Those invited to organize a minisymposium (PARA does minisymposia by invitation only) need to provide an overview of their minisymposium and selected speakers no later than March 14, unless you have been in contact with the organizer about an extension.

Organizers will select the topics to be addressed, obtain speakers for those topics, decide with each speaker on the title of his/her presentation, and provide other information as needed.

Organizers are especially encouraged to include speakers from more than one country and from underrepresented groups, including women and minorities, whenever appropriate.

Like previous PARA meetings, the PARA'08 organizing committee will not be able to waive the registration fee for minisymposium speakers, or reimburse their expenses. Therefore, organizers should make no financial commitments on behalf of PARA'08 to speakers when organizing their minisymposium. Unlike SIAM, PARA 2008 may, as stated in your invitation, provide some support for the MS organizers based the number of talks (and thereby possibly addtionally paying speakers) you are able to attract. In general, this support, if offered, will be in form of free registration fee for the invited organizer only. Note that no travel funds are available for organizers, and all travel and hotel reservations need to be done by the organizers, unless the PARA organizing committee specifically promise they will arrange your lodging.

Minisymposium organizers should seriously consider the following recommendations when selecting speakers in a minisymposium. (These are exactly the same as SIAM recommends)

1. Speakers should be selected primarily for their current contributions to the topic area.
2. Speakers should be as representative of researchers in the area as is practical.
3. Minisymposium organizers should select the first speaker based on one who can provide an overview of the topic area, put the whole area in perspective, particularly with regard to applications, and suggest new venues for continued research and application. A minisymposium organizer may speak in the minisymposium he or she is organizing.
4. Minisymposium organizers are encouraged to include women and members of underrepresented minorities as speakers whenever appropriate.
5. Both PARA'08 and SIAM discourages minisymposia in which most of the speakers come from the same organization or if all co-authors on the papers being presented in a minisymposium are from the same organization.

Preparation of the Overview

The Minisymposium Organizer should provide the following information: