ISBA 2000 Scientific Committee Final Report

Only a few remarks/thoughts to add to the earlier reports (which are copied below).

1) We lost a few scheduled/expected speakers, at late notice. In each case a backstop/replacement speaker was drawn from the lists of poster presenters, to ensure coherent sessions.

2) Quite a few scheduled poster presenters either failed to attend the conference or failed to present the poster. Of the 100+ posters originally scheduled and expected, we had about 75-80 presentations. The poster sessions were all well attended late into the evening.

3) This was a broad ranging program. The 120 talks and 75-80 posters made it (by a stretch) the meeting with the largest number of formal presentations at any Bayesian meeting. In spite of the parallel sessions, most were well attended. The poorest attendance was at the theme sessions, in general.

4) Feedback, from a range of participants, on the format of the program has been generally positive. The committee received no really notable suggestions for changes in program structure for future meetings.

5) One matter raising some (multiple) negative comments was that the public policy/government theme was somewhat unappealing. Attendance at theme sessions reflected this.

6) We received very positive feedback on the continuation of ISBA's tradition of having a conference open to all interested in presenting. To the extent that the conference facility allows, this should be continued. The strategy of calling for individuals to put together sessions of three talks on a specific topic ensure coherence within sessions and seemed to work well at ISBA 2000. Consider continuing this. The two main negatives/overheads of an open meeting are: a) the necessity of parallel sessions -- a few negatives were received on this at ISBA 2000, but these were mild and overwhelmed by the very positive reception of the diversity and quality of talks; the predominant complaint related to "difficulty" in choosing between parallel sessions; b) the organisational workload for the scientific committee.

7) The two tutorials at the start of the meeting were well attended and well received. This tutorial activity is very important from the viewpoints of (a) ISBA's interdisciplinary and international outreach activities and image, and (b) raising travel grants for junior folks for the meeting. ISBA should consider this as a regular component of future meetings.

8) The local support staff were most important and effective in ensuring smooth running of the scientific program. Presentation venue and facilities were excellent (a few computer A/V glitches notwithstanding), and generally well managed.

9) A good time was had by most, if not all.

Report on activities of the ISBA 2000 Scientific Committee

The November 1999 report of the Scientific Committee is copied below. The current report is a short, summary but complete update on activities since November.

The scientific program was complete, in its first draft, by the turn of the year. Since then, this committee has been involved in essentially continuous communication with individuals involved in the program - session organisers, chairs, speakers, poster presenters, and ISBA executives -- as well as numerous late comers enquiring about the conference and participation. The major business has been that of dealing with this mass of communication, and trouble-shooting. We have had many dropouts from both talk and poster programs, and have worked (sometimes hard) with session organisers to replace dropouts. As of May 8th, we have a complete program of 42 talk sessions in which a few have been modified in topic/title due to dropouts, but almost all now have all participants confirmed. We have just 2 speakers yet to register, and who have informed us, repeatedly, that they will. We are missing no abstracts from the oral program, and are awaiting only three or four from the poster program. This committee has been extremely proactive in repeatedly contacting participants to ensure their commitment to participation as scheduled.

We have received and dealt with problems and questions arising in multiple emails, daily, for most of 2000 (several hundred emails).

The poster program was filled by the end of 1999 and we proceeded to operate a waiting list. Since then, the dropout rate has meant that all waitlisted individuals have been added to the program, and several have been "upgraded" to oral presentations as vacancies arose. As of May 8th, we have a balanced 35 or 36 posters in each of the evening sessions.

The committee has been involved in routine email discussions with other ISBA 2000 offices and ISBA execs, including assistance and advice on matters financial, publication issues, hotel and reservations issues, the development of the two tutorials, and development of the conference web site, and scheduling matters. The committee developed guidelines and information for all participants concerning presentation of talks, computer demos, AV aids, poster format and facilities, and other such details, and, on May 8th, emailed a final information bulletin to all 300+/- registered participants.

At this point, the pre-conference business of this committee is essentially complete.

Report on 1999 activities of ISBA 2000 Scientific Committee

The Scientific Committee was convened in early 1999, following appointment of the Chair and members representing ISBA and Eurostat. The committee was charged with developing and organising the scientific program at the meeting. Communications among committee members have been and remain primarily electronic. All committee members continue to contribute.

The first call for proposals was posted to email lists, bulletin boards, web sites, and published newsletters of various organisations in spring; this was followed by a second call in summer. Throughout the year committee members have been actively publicising the meeting and calls for proposals, and soliciting proposals from individuals and groups. This has included a range of efforts to engage and attract researchers in official statistics as well as stressing the ISBA mission issues of interdisciplinary and international activism.

At the target Oct 1 date for submissions, we had proposals for talks and sessions of talks with over 200 named presenters. Following very substantial within-committee iterations, and many follow-up contacts with proposers, we have selected and organised submissions into coherent sessions of talks and three poster sessions. This process involved significant interaction with Eurostat bureaucrats, as well as ISBA execs. This has resulted in an excellent set of sessions, covering Theme areas extraordinarily well in addition to broadly representing the frontiers of Bayesian statistics in theory, methodology and applications. In the 3 track format, the current list allows for one of the tracks to be completely Theme, as well as having quite a few additional Theme sessions in the other two tracks and many Theme topics covered in the three poster sessions. Key considerations in developing and finalising the program were (a) official statistics/government theme, (b) topicality and importance of the proposal area, (c) overlap/duplication, (d) international and demographic representation of speakers, (e) intangible "feel good" factors, (f) politics (as usual). Full details of the program are not reported here as the resulting program is available at the web site http://www.stat.duke.edu/conferences/ISBA2000/isba.html and this will be linked to the formal ISBA2000 web site when finalised. At time of writing, the 43 oral sessions are in place but awaiting final confirmation on some details, and we are iterating with all remaining talk/poster proposers to finalise commitments for poster presentations. We anticipate a final set of three evening poster sessions presenting about 100 posters.

By the end of 1999 we expect to have the scientific program complete. The remaining business for this committee then on will be to (a) continue to interact with the 220+ presenters and to trouble-shoot problems arising with participation that impact the program, (b) develop poster session format instructions and guidance, (c) deal with any other issues that arise directly related to the scientific presentation program, (d) continue to field the (many) enquiries about matters outside the purview of this committee, and to forward them or to point enquirers to the relevant contacts or information at the web site.

On this latter point, this Committee has also been involved in discussions and limited action on grant development for travel grants, other issues of finance, questions about pre-conference tutorials for junior researchers and students, and discussions of a limited publication of some OS papers in a special issue of RoS. Some of this has involved very necessary discussions among two or more committees, and will continue. Some of this activity has, however, attempted to draw this committee into more active participation in areas outside our remit and area of contracted responsibility. From here on, we do not expect to be involved substantially in these activities (fundraising, managing publications, etc). We will, of course, continue to respond to requests for advice on such matters from ISBA Program Committee -- on funding (in coordination with the ISBA 2000 Finance Committee) and other programmatic activity at conferences --, and from the ISBA Publications Committee -- on publications (SBSS proceedings, RoS special issue). As the primary primary organ of communication between ISBA and the participants, the Scientific Committee needs to hear about developments in these other committees so as to be able to respond to the growing numbers of requests for such information from participants -- requests concerning information about proceedings are becoming particularly pressing,

Beyond this, this committee expects to continue to serve as a basic e-conduit for information from the ISBA committees on various ISBA 2000 matters, as adjunct to bulletins on the conference web site.

Mike West, Chair