Static Operational Plan for Vice-Chair

NOTE: This is intended only to be used if the database server is inoperable for some reason. This way you have at least an outline of the tasks at the last time a snapshot was taken.

Operational Plan for

According to our section's Bylaws, The Vice-Chair shall be the Program Chair and be responsible for organizing the program for each Section meeting. This position is considered an Officer and a member of the Executive Committee.

Time line for tasks

Today is Friday, 21 August 2015. This timeline assumes that the next meeting is scheduled to be on 2 October 2015 and the last meeting was on 24 October 2014. (Note that next meeting date may not be yet set and the default date of 1 Oct is being used.) If you are on the executive committee and you are reviewing the operational plan for your office, you may interested in editing/modifying what you see here.

1. Immediately following the Section meeting [Target date: 31 October 2014]
   1. Use the MAA web site to find list of potential speakers. Contact speaker(s) of choice (perhaps in consultation with your department) to determine availability. Choose one who is "free." Do this task IMMEDIATELY so that we can have the best choice of available speakers as possible
   2. Coordinate with the Vice-Chair Elect to determine a suitable date for our Section meeting. While the Vice-Chair Elect will determine any dates to exclude (due to local conflicts), you will work to find dates that work for the speaker(s). Together, determine a weekend that works. In the past, it has usually been in early to middle April and sometimes late March (when in the spring) or typically sometime in October when in the fall.
   3. When a date has been determined and confirmed that the speaker can come and that hotel and room reservations are not problem, email (using following link) members of the Executive Committee regarding the dates and speaker(s). URL: individual/exCommEmails
   4. Also, be sure to communicate the details (date, location, speakers, etc.) of the meeting to national MAA through Annie Baer. abaer@maa.org http://www.maa.org/meetings/section-meetings
2. Four months before the meeting [Target date: 2 June 2015]
   1. If the title(s) and abstract(s) of the presentation(s) by the speaker(s) are not yet in hand, arrange to obtain them. These are needed for the Call of Papers. Coordinate with the Secretary the preparation and dissemination of the Call for papers.
   2. Coordinate with Vice-Chair Elect about housing accommodations for the speaker(s). Communicate with speaker(s), present alternatives, and offer assistance. Contact Vice-Chair Elect to arrange a hotel reservation, if needed.
   3. [If the Iowa Collegiate Mathematics Competition will be held in the same general time frame and it makes sense to include information in the Call for Papers details about the competition, contact the Competition Coordinator requesting details about the competition (where, when, and so on). Send this information on to the Secretary.] - MARKED FOR DELETION
   4. Determine a basic tentative schedule of how the weekend should be ordered. Are there any panel discussions that would be useful? When can these best fit. Look at past schedules (see following URL) and think about what worked and what could be improved. When completed, forward any relevant details to be included on the web page for the call to the webmaster. URL: session/printSchedule
   5. Determine a suggested cut-off date for when abstracts are due. Communicate this to the webmaster to add to the information page.
3. Two-three months before the meeting [Target date: 2 July 2015]
   1. Finish the details of the program for both days excluding the assignment of contributed paper talks to particular times (since submissions have not yet all been received). In other words, all the details of who is speaking when and where are considered except the collection of contributed papers. Details about the rooms needs to be coordinated with the Vice-Chair Elect. In particular, the schedule should now have details specifying the following:
      1. If there are any panel discussions to take place, topics, abstracts, moderators, times and places should be determined.
      2. Friday night's speaker: title and abstract known, time and location set
      3. Reception, if any, following speaker: time and location set - details of content will be taken care of by Vice-Chair Elect
      4. Saturday's speaker, if any: title and abstract known, time and location set
      5. Saturday's Business Meeting: time and location set
      6. Saturday's lunch: time and locations/directions
      7. Concurrent Contributed Paper sessions: times and locations
      8. breaks: times and durations
      9. Take into account the need for the breakfast meeting of the Executive Committee, leaving enough time to get back to the first event on Saturday.
   2. Once the details of the program have been determined on paper, "build" the schedule online. You may wish to start with the following link, which creates a basic barebones template comparable to which we have used in the past. This then can be edited and new sessions added. (See below for how to do these.) URL: session/createTemplate
   3. To add a new session, use the following link: session/create
   4. To view all sessions created thus far, as well as be able to edit any of these, use the following url: session/index
   5. If you have created a session that you wish to delete, contact the database master (Al) and he can do so. Be explicit about which one (sequence number is a unique value, given a specific year).
4. 2-6 weeks before the meeting [Target date: 21 August 2015]
   1. Process the abstract submissions as they come in. Be sure that you understand the wishes of each person, particularly regarding choice of day and equipment or software needs. Communicate as necessary to clarify. These can be viewed (and edited, if absolutely needed) here: proposal/index
   2. Depending on the accumulation of abstracts, perhaps ask the Liaison Coordinator to issue a reminder about submitting abstracts.
   3. On paper, try to come up with a preliminary schedule of concurrent sessions. Try to not have more than three sessions running concurrently. Where possible, try to group like topics sequentially in one session. Try to balance talks in other ways as seems appropriate.
   4. Using the tools mentioned in the latter subitems of the previous item, conform all the sessions to be included in the schedule.
   5. Let the Secretary and the webmaster know that the Schedule (as found on following url) is finalized. The webmaster can then make there is a link to it and the secretary can now print some, if desired. session/printSchedule
   6. Using the list of emails of speakers (url that follows), send schedule announcement to all speakers. This should announcement should include the following information for each speaker: title, abstract, day, time, room #, duration, and available equipment. (Use url for schedule as on previous subitem for most of this information.) proposal/emailList
   7. Be sure that the Vice Chair-Elect has forwarded (or added online) a moderator for each session.
   8. Confirm flight plans for the plenary speaker. Arrange drivers to pick up and return speaker. Make hotel reservations. Add speaker talks to the proposals, if not already done. Invite speaker to breakfast meeting.