DUTIES SPECIFIED IN BYLAWS (Article II, Section 7):

1. Organize and coordinate programs for scientific meetings.

2. Coordinate the organization of symposia and workshops and receive and arrange the titles and abstracts of papers submitted for the scientific meetings.

3. Advise the hosts of regional meetings on procedures and in setting up local committees.

4. Arrange for publication and distribution of the abstracts of meetings of the Society.

5. Distribute rules and coordinate the program presentation for the Warder Clyde Allee Award. The Second President-Elect chairs the committee which administers the competition.

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES:

ABS Senior Program Officer Duties

The main duty of the ABS Senior Program Officer is to coordinate the annual meeting. Although there are some aspects of the meeting that are consistent from year to year, there is great room for creativity and future development.

1. Proactive Meeting Coordination. One of the main reasons for creating the two-part Program Officer position was to allow one of these (the SPO) the time to think about broader EC goals and find ways of implementing them within the meeting program.

a. Although the JPO is in charge of soliciting symposium proposals from the general membership and presenting the proposals to the EC for a vote, the SPO and JPO should be in close touch about possible proposals as they come in, and the SPO can play a major role by advising proposers or even soliciting proposals from specific individuals. In recent years, ABS committees have also been a source of symposium proposals.

b. With the help of the Plenary Committee (Section 7d), the SPO chooses one Fellow to give a plenary lecture at each meeting. These are given an honorarium (currently $500) and the Host will waive their registration fee. All other expenses are the Fellow's responsibility.

c. The SPO maintains a list of past plenary speakers and should coordinate Plenary Committee efforts to choose speakers that represent diverse interests. Sometimes it works well to coordinate plenary speakers with symposia, workshops or other special events, such as those organized by ABS Committees. It is the SPO's job to advise the Host and President as to whether their choices of speakers match well with other meeting events.

d. Primary responsibilities for invitations to plenary speakers belong to the Plenary Committee, as outlined in Policy Section 7d. In some situations, the officer designated to handle a given invitation may ask someone else to carry that out, but should follow the process through to its conclusion.

2. Liaison with Meeting hosts.

a. Maintaining host guide: The SPO is in charge of updating and maintaining the host guide on the web. The ABS Central Office can help you with the technical details. Read through it frequently to make sure what you are actually doing is reflected by the guide. Make sure that anyone thinking about planning a meeting has a recent copy.

b. Planning with the hosts at the preceding ABS meeting : Typically both you and a representative of next year's hosting team will be at the annual meeting. Plan to spend 2 hours or more going over their preparation for the meeting up to this point and your role in meeting construction. Hosts usually know little about the role of the program officer and who does what at what time. This is a good time to detail the steps you will go through and the steps that they must take. Decisions as to when to set the abstract deadline, when to have all documents ready for the Newsletter, what keynote or Fellows speakers you might invite, etc should all be started at this time. Often the hosts will need to talk with their Conference Center staff before they can give you certain dates, but they should leave prepared to start working on the necessary aspects of their hosting job and knowing what it is that you will be doing. Make sure they know that they will need to come up with a logo. Find out what sort of AV equipment will be available so that this can be stated on the abstract forms. Offer suggestions on their budget. Determine which ABS Central Office services they will use and pass this information to the ABS CO.

c. Site visit to host institution : In most cases, you will want to visit the host institution early in the Fall term preceding a meeting. Usually, the host will arrange for your expenses to be covered as part of a seminar trip. You should work out the details when you meet with the host during the annual meeting. See accompanying sheet for details of what to do during the site visit.

3. Abstract Submission.

a. The SPO will need to work with the ABS Central Office to ensure that the on-line abstract submittal forms are correct and available on time. In particular, check to make sure that available AV equipment is described accurately (this often changes from year to year). Consider changing the topics by which speakers categorize their talks. Test the system a few times and ensure that you will be able to process and organize abstracts once they are received. Currently, abstracts are sent in the form of an email note. These are then imported into a spreadsheet or database for further processing.

b. The abstract deadline should be set to give you and Host plenty of time to complete all tasks before meeting. Typically, you will need at least 3 weeks after the deadline to receive, process and organizes all abstracts, arrange them into a program, and format the program and abstract booklets. Another 3-4 weeks are needed to get the booklets printed and delivered to the host site. Thus the deadline should be set NO LESS than 6-8 weeks before the date of the meeting. Ten weeks is more comfortable.

c. The actual deadline day chosen should be a Friday for both psychological and practical reasons. This gives everyone a full workweek to think about and ready an abstract and the psychological end of a weekend. It also gives you an easy way to be lenient by giving the tardy (who contact you) the deadline of the next Monday. Remember to avoid holidays just before or after the deadline. (Note: the Friday deadline does mean that you have to be prepared to spend part of the weekend receiving and processing abstracts.)

d. BUDGETING: The SPO can use the discretionary budget for anything except covering his own costs of attending the meeting. Typical uses include helping send the CO staff to the meeting, registration waivers for members of the press, software or hardware needed to create the budget.

4. Creating the program.

a. In the Fall before the meeting, use an old program to create a template for the current schedule. Change the dates and move around plenary speakers and special events as necessary for the current year. Plenary talks are usually held in the morning (to get everyone out of bed), except for the President's Choice lecture that is intended to be the very last talk of the meeting (before the banquet).

b. Block the symposia, invited paper sessions and the Allee talks into the program schedule. Ideally, these should not be held concurrently and should get the largest room available. Check with the JPO to make sure you have any last minute details from the organizers. Schedule the Allee early in the meeting (Monday) to avoid making the participants wait nervously too long. Also, judges need some time after the session to make decisions. Try not to schedule it on Sunday, though, to ensure that the session is AFTER the Allee dinner.

c. You will receive the regular abstracts via email. You can process these into a spreadsheet file (e.g., Excel) using most modern email programs. Alternatively, the ABS Central Office can send you a spreadsheet with the abstract information that was submitted via the web. Begin by making one or several copies of this spreadsheet and storing them in different places for safety. Sort the abstracts by type (talks, posters, invited sessions, plenaries) and place each set into a different spreadsheet page.

d. Place talks into a schedule. Below is one way in which you might go about doing this.

i. Begin with the symposia and Allee talks, working with the organizers to make sure that your lists of speakers agree.

ii. Sort the talks by scientific topic and try to find natural groups of 4-5 talks that can then be combined into larger groups of 8-10 talks each (about one session). Identify sessions that should not be in competition with each other and form these into even larger groups. For example, consider creating a set of “sexual selection”, “communication”, and “predator/prey” sessions. Talks within each of these large sessions should not be held concurrently.

iii. Place the sessions in rooms. With only 3 concurrent sessions, one of these will usually be taken up with a symposium or invited paper session. Begin with the largest group of regular sessions (recently, “sexual selection” and “communication”) and place these in the second largest room. Fit in other sessions wherever you can, checking always for possible overlap with symposia and invited paper sessions also.

iv. Check the details for other possible problems:

v. Sessions likely to draw few people should not be run against several very popular sessions. Sexual Selection and Foraging Decisions should not both run against a session “Drosophila Learning”, for instance.

vi. Check to make sure that Allee judges are not slotted to give papers in sessions conflicting with the Allee Session.

vii. Avoid scheduling papers on the same species or even family against each other.

viii. Avoid scheduling papers from the same lab against each other and make sure that mentors of students giving papers are not themselves giving papers at about the same time in another session. (Actually, I often email a query on this if nothing is noted on transmittal forms – sometimes it is important to people and sometimes not.)

ix. Put some energy into choosing good names for the sessions. It is safer to stick with very general titles. Creative names can lead to wrath and/or worry of speakers in those sessions.

x. Watch out for the last day phenomenon, especially if there is no President's Choice lecture scheduled for that day. Consider placing some popular sessions, symposia, or plenary talks on the last day to encourage people to stay for the entire meeting.

e.; Posters. Group the posters roughly by topic. It is nice to schedule the poster session for Tuesday evening, if posters can be up during the whole meeting. This way people can look at them early and meet with the authors on Tuesday. If not, consider two poster sessions.

f. Films. Usually, you will need two film evenings that do not conflict with Poster Sessions. Generally they run 7-9 or 9:30. Saturday and Sunday work reasonably well. Check with the JPO who will serve as liaison with the Film Chair.

g. Workshops. Get information from the JPO regarding evening workshops and schedule these.

h. Executive Committee and Business Meetings. Recently, there have been two EC meetings and one general Business meeting to be scheduled during the conference. The first EC meeting is held all day (8 or 8:30 to approximately 5) on Saturday, the Business meeting follows (preferably on Monday to give the secretary time to prepare materials), and the second EC meeting should be shortly afterwards (usually Monday or Tuesday). The Business meeting is best scheduled to follow a plenary lecture so that the maximum number of people are in attendance and feel “invited” or coerced.

i. Public Event. In recent years, there has been a public event scheduled as part of the meeting, but directed towards the general community of the host institution. This might be scheduled as an evening lecture or as a symposium the day before or after the meetings. Again, check with the JPO who may have information from the Applied ABS Committee about this event.

5. Publish the Schedule.

a. Number the talks by time slot. (The abstract booklet will be alphabetical and the index should give information about second and third authors. The numbers, thus, provide the only way to find the talks quickly in the schedule.) Number the posters as P1, P2, and so on, beginning with the Founders and Genesis awards. Add these numbers to the original full list of presentations in your spreadsheet.

b. Create camera-ready copy of the program. Use old versions to get the basic structure or be creative and invent a new style of your own. Make sure you leave space for all ads. Use bold and fonts creatively to make it easy to read. Leave blank slots in the table for concurrent sessions that end earlier. It is also helpful to keep rooms in the same order across the page on successive pages. It's useful to include a site map and some blank pages for notes. Check with the hosts to determine how many to send. Ask the publishers to send you 5 extra copies (for the historian and to be sent out to anyone who asks for one).

c. Send the final copy to the ABS Central Office for posting on the web. Beware of giving authors too much time or offering them the chance to make major changes. You may find yourself flooded with requests to be scheduled at a different time!

6. Prepare the abstract booklet. Consider hiring students to help with this part.

a. Add scheduling information. If possible, translate abstract numbers into information regarding dates and rooms. Alphabetize abstracts by presenting author and save the spreadsheet as a text file.

b. Proofreading. Transfer the resulting textfile into a word-processing program. Read through each abstract briefly and correct any major mistakes. Spell check and read through as many as you can. (They often need considerable editing!)

c. Formatting. Use search/replace and macros to change html code to italics and make other changes (see early versions for an example) as necessary to format the abstract booklet. Use old versions to get the basic structure, or use bold and fonts creatively to make it easy to read.

c. Index. Return to the spreadsheet and duplicate any entry with multiple authors so that there is one entry for each author. Sort by last name of author and create a second text file that is the index. Add the index to the end of the program booklet and give it to the SPO for inclusion in the program. Consider adding the program summary to the front of the abstract booklet.

c. Front page. Just inside the cover, a first page should state that these are privileged communications not for citation without permission of the authors. Include any special acknowledgments from the meeting hosts. The Program (re Policy, Section 7 j 3) should contain the following statements: Audio recording of presentations at ABS meetings is permitted only with prior approval of the speaker. Video taping may be allowed only under special circumstances with prior approval of the Program Officer, the Executive Committee, and the speaker.

7. Publish.

a. In recent years, we have sent the final file electronically (a MS Word file) to the publishing company (OmniPress?) who then delivers it directly to the hosts. Again check with hosts to figure out how many to create.

b. Also put together PDF and HTML versions of the abstract booklet and program for the web (or give your files to the WebMaster?).

c. Send out a confirmation email to all authors asking them to check for major problems. Begin a list of cancellations/corrections. Again, beware of giving authors too much time or offering them the chance to make major changes. You may find yourself flooded with requests to rewrite abstracts.

8. Annual Report. For the EC meeting, you will need to prepare a brief final report for the year, describing highlights of program organization and numbers of abstracts, discussing any changes in or problems in process (identifying those that are EC issues), giving advertiser numbers and total amount received, detailing expenses directly by you or drawn from your budget at the Central Office, and projecting a budget for the coming year. Ideally, this report is circulated before the meeting. Inform the ABS President of any items that should be scheduled for EC discussion at the meeting (use email instead, whenever possible).

9. Future Meetings. Throughout your term, work with the ABS Presidents to identify hosts for future meetings and to give them the information and advice they will need to put together a proposal. In some cases, the SPO might even make a coordination visit to the (potential) site before the accustomed Fall visit to assist with planning. As future plans are made, the SPO should be aware of and attempt to coordinate dates with the meetings of other, related organizations, especially ISBE and IEC. As specifics become available, the SPO should distribute the information to other organizations for publication, and should update listings in the BIOSIS comprehensive meeting list. Update the Host Guide materials on the web frequently.

ABS Junior Program Officer Duties

The main duty of the ABS Junior Program Officer is to coordinate the mechanics of the annual meeting.

1. Call for symposia: The JPO is in charge of soliciting symposium and invited paper session proposals from the membership and presenting the proposals to the EC for a vote. Before the annual meeting, the JPO should make sure the guide for symposium and invited paper session hosts (on the web) is up-to-date. Also, a formal call for symposia and invited paper sessions should be submitted to the ABS Secretary for inclusion in the June newsletter. Then, at the ABS Business Meeting and then again immediately after the annual meeting (via ABSnet?), the JPO can encourage the membership to submit proposals for invited paper sessions and direct them to the web page for detailed instructions. The deadline for receipt of proposals should be set for about one month after the meeting. The JPO will gather proposals and present them to the EC (via email) for discussion and vote. An early deadline also allows for the chosen sessions to be included as part of the early notices about the meeting.

2. Introductions and Moderators: The JPO is in charge of finding and coordinating moderators for contributed paper sessions and people to introduce the plenary speakers.

a. Symposia and invited paper sessions will usually be moderated by the organizers of those sessions. Meeting hosts will usually arrange for the Keynote Speaker to be introduced and the ABS President should introduce the President's Choice lecturer. All of these need to be reminded that introductions/moderators are needed.

b. Volunteer moderators will be needed for all of the other sessions. Once abstracts have been received and the SPO has developed a preliminary schedule, the JPO can start lining up moderators. In recent years, moderators have been chosen from the list of volunteers, based on the topics they listed for their own talks. Ideally, speakers will NOT moderate their own session, but rather a session on a similar topic that they are likely to be interested in anyway. Once preliminary assignments have been made, moderators should be contacted (via email) to ensure that they are available for that time/date. A list of about 5 backup moderators should be prepared in case of last minute cancellations. Avoid scheduling yourself as a moderator. You will have plenty to do at the meeting with last minute emergencies—and you may need to pinch hit for a last minute moderator cancellation anyway.

c. A detailed list of speakers (including full name) and abstracts should be provided to each moderator for their session (this is easy to create from the spreadsheet used by the SPO to develop the abstract booklet). Ideally, this and a newly updated version of the printed “Suggestions for Moderators” will be sent to the meeting host for inclusion in the registration packets for individual moderators.

d. No later than one month after a meeting, the JPO should send out a brief thank-you note to all moderators via email. In this note, ask also for information about any speakers who did not show to present their talk. The By-Laws state that people who do not notify the Program Officer or host BEFORE the meeting that they are withdrawing their papers are barred from presenting a paper at the following meeting. (Of course, all such decisions to bar a person are your call; and you should exercise your own judgment for emergencies.) If there have been no-shows, it is up to you to contact such people and inform them politely of their restriction from presenting a paper at the next meeting. They are not, however, restricted from attending or being a non-presenting author. It is wise to make it clear that this is an ABS regulation, not your decision as Program Officer.

3. Planning with the hosts at the preceding ABS meeting : Participate, if possible, in the yearly meeting of the Senior Program Officer with the representative of next year's hosting team. Highlight potential problems and give advice, as necessary.

4. Program ads and exhibits. The JPO is in charge of soliciting ads for the meeting program and exhibit tables for the annual meeting. All funds generated in this way will go directly to the meeting hosts, lowering the cost of the meeting. This set of duties might be transferred to the ABS Central Office for greater efficiency, if a cost-effective way of doing so can be developed.

a. In the fall, the JPO should look through the spreadsheet list of possible exhibitors and consider adding or subtracting new contacts. Determine whether policies and/or prices need to be revised, and update the web page. Collect detailed information from the meeting host about the location and set up for exhibitors, and consult with the SPO about sizes and prices for the ads. Ad copy should be received within a week or two of the abstract deadline. All checks should go to the ABS Central Office, who will forward them directly to the meeting hosts.

b. In January, contact potential exhibitors and invite them to register for the meetings through the web page or via direct contact with you. Keep track of the exhibitor registrations arrive. Check this regularly against the list of payments received by the Central Office.

In late spring, send out reminders to those who have registered and not paid. Make individual contact with regular exhibitors who may not registered on time. Forward your list also to the meeting hosts and help them to develop a letter of instructions for the vendors (including e.g., where to set up, where to ship materials). Forward a second list to the SPO so they know how many ads to expect.

c. During the meetings, stop by the exhibits and talk with the exhibitors. Take notes of any suggestions they might have for future years.

c. Sent books are charged one-quarter table fee, and set up and take down is done in exchange for donation of the books. Under no circumstances will we (ABS/Host) pack up and ship books back. Registration stuffing is done at no charge by Local Host (assuming no copying/printing charges), but decision as to appropriateness is made by JPO.

5. Web pages. The JPO is in charge of maintaining the regular Meeting web pages, except for the Abstract Submission pages, which are the responsibility of the SPO. You can make necessary changes yourself or work with the ABS Webmaster.

a. At the annual meeting determine whether the hosts will want to create their own web pages or use the standard forms from the ABS Central Office. In early Fall, work with them and the ABS Webmaster to create a new set of pages for the annual meeting based on information from the meeting invitation. Revise information about registration and housing, and add any new information from the meeting Newsletter invitation regarding speakers, symposia, etc.

b. As far in advance as possible, submit conference dates and web link to the Biosis Conference web page: http://www.biosis.org/free_resources/conf_cal.html

c. Remind the SPO to check the call for papers and abstract submission pages (all of them) and decide whether changes need to be made. All instructions must be absolutely clear and correct.

d. Check the vendor/exhibitor registration pages and make any necessary changes.

6. Liaison with others (keeper of the details):

a. In Fall before the meeting:

i. Contact the organizers of the Allee (second president-elect), Founders (First President-Elect), Genesis (President), Latin American Travel (middle Member-at-Large), Diversity (Treasurer), and Film (Film Committee chair) Awards to share information. Make sure they have updated the relevant web pages and reviewed all the information in the meeting invitation, and that deadlines correspond with the abstract submission deadline.

ii. Contact Education Committee chair to see if winner of Education Award is going to give an evening plenary or if they are planning any special workshops or other events.

iii. Contact Applied Animal Behavior committee to discuss the development of the public event.

iv. Contact symposium and invited paper session organizers. Offer them help in producing web pages and encourage them to discuss details of scheduling with the SPO.

b. In mid-Spring:

i. Contact award organizers again and set deadline for receipt of judges names to be included in the program. Get the name of the Founder being honored by the Founders Award for the coming year. Make sure Allee judges are available to SPO to ensure that they are not speaking during the Allee competition. After abstracts arrive, send lists of award participants to the organizers.

ii. Contact the President about scheduling of the EC meetings. Determine how much time is needed for the Banquet awards ceremony and ask if any special text should be included in the Meeting Program about this event.

iii. Contact the meeting hosts and ask if they want to include any special acknowledgments in the program and abstract booklet.

iv. Contact Wm. C. Brown to make sure that they are still planning to publish the program in exchange for 3 full page ads (including back page). Discuss deadlines.

c. Around abstract deadline:

i. The JPO will also receive and process all incoming emails regarding the meetings. In many cases, this will involve simply forwarding the note to someone else who can answer important questions.

ii. Once abstracts have arrived, the JPO will need to work with the ABS Central Office to determine a) whether abstract presenters and sponsors are members of the society, and 2) whether abstract presenters have also registered and paid for the meetings. Those who are not must be contacted individually.

7. Workshops: The JPO coordinates workshops and works with the SPO to schedule them into the meeting program.

a. Meeting with American Editors. Traditionally, there is an evening time slot for members to meet with the American Editors of Animal Behaviour to discuss any issues affecting publication, the journal, etc. Contact the editors before abstract deadline, preferably, to remind him/her of this event and discuss possible evenings. The Editor will typically be there for the initial EC meeting through at least the second EC meeting, but may not be staying for whole meeting. The time slot chosen should not be on same evening as the second EC meeting!

b. Federal funding workshop. Traditionally, there is an evening time slot for meeting participants to talk with the NSF Director for Animal Behavior. In recent years, Fred Stollnitz and a representative from NIH have also attended. We have agreed also to offer these federal agencies one free exhibit table at the meetings, including the usual free registration for one staff person. Any other relevant program officials should certainly be invited also, including those involved with public and non-university educational objectives. Email all such people before the abstract deadline to remind them of this event and discuss the scheduling of the meeting. Time slot is similar to that of Editor.

c. Other evening workshops. Other members or committees may approach you to schedule an evening workshop. In the past, we have had them about balancing career and family, speaking with the press, improving diversity, etc. At the moment, choice among these is entirely up to you. In the future, these may be officially solicited and chosen by the EC.

d. Lunch workshops. Several ABS committees may want to schedule informal lunchtime gatherings. Speak with the meeting hosts about the possibilities for identifying special tables or side rooms in the cafeteria. Contact ABS committee chairs to see if they are interested.

e. Call for Artwork. Consider sending out a note via ABSnet? to solicit original, black-and-white line drawings to be included in the meeting program. Give these to the SPO for inclusion in the program.

f. Regional Meetings. Keep track of the regional meetings and make sure that they are advertised on the web. Consider ways in which you might help current and future hosts pass information. This is a new duty of the PO position, so be creative.

g. Annual Report. Help the Senior PO produce a brief final report for the annual EC meeting. Provide the SPO with advertiser numbers and total amount received, detailed expenses directly by you or drawn from your budget at the Central Office, and project a budget for the coming year.