[HubbardBrookCOS] Alternate formats for the HB Cooperators Meeting

[Ruth D Yanai]

Hubbard Brook Scientists,

One of the topics on the agenda for Wednesday afternoon (COS Business) is a discussion of the format of the annual HB Cooperators Meeting in July.

To help focus the discussion, and to involve people who don’t make it to the meeting but might be interested, I am providing notes below.

This topic was raised by Ivan Fernandez, our External Advisor.  It takes an outsider to come to our meeting and have a fresh outlook!

He asked us what we want:
>> Is there a priority for students over established scientists, early career versus senior scientists?  Is the plan to be sure everyone in certain categories, or present, is able to present?  Is there an general 'takeaway' from the meetings, or just the networking?  I ask not as though these are right or wrong, but whatever the priority for the group is should shape the plan and the details of the agenda. It seems ideal to give everyone who wants to present a chance to do so, for big new projects or findings and end results to be shared with all.  And since everyone is together, it would be ideal to have a dialogue about emerging scientific puzzles, new opportunities, as well as time for discussion that includes everyone, but particularly so graduate students can hear and participate on what might be the big science questions so there is a deeper discourse on the issue that students rarely see in the exchange among the giants in their field.  
>> 
>> So can all that be done in the time had?  I doubt it. Thus, are there priorities within those kinds of objectives?  My comments that probably prompted this exercise was in my observation that there were a few important scientific topics that came up that seemed to be ready to take off into an important discussion but that were almost always cut off because of time. And as you watch students, you can see they are compelled by the exchange of agreement and disagreement as science unfolds.  Thus, the question was whether there could be a bit more room for that either with sections of the program, or perhaps in a session about priority themes that emerged from the day of talks and what does the HB community know, and where should they go?

Pam Templer and I developed these questions for discussion (these could become survey questions):

	• What is the purpose of the meetings?  
	• Should everyone who wants to give a talk be fit into the program?
History:  we began excluding talks that weren’t directly related to HB.  How else were talks excluded?  (Tim knows)  How should talks be selected if there are too many?
3.  Do we want to make time for discussion?  If so, how? 
	• a time slot at the end of each session.  
	• time at the end of the meeting or at the end of each day
	• some way to be more flexible about scheduling the talks 
4. Should some of the talks be shorter?  The Shoestring project has been mixing in shorter talks.
	•  Would you personally use a shorter time slot?  (sometimes, always, never)
	• Would your students use a shorter time slot?
Who would like to be involved in a committee to develop and administer a survey before our April meeting?  
Survey Monkey is free for the first 100 responses.
Add:  Are you in favor of broadcasting and recording the meeting?

See you soon,

x Ruth