Minutes from the Jan 27 10AM meeting on starting the seminars on scientific computing

Present: Richard Dubois, Henry van den Bedem, Vineet Rawat, Arno Candel.

Seminar details:

• Location: On-site at SLAC, ideally at Kavli auditorium
• Speakers: From all directorates at SLAC, and quite possibly from Stanford or other places, including companies, either local or remote (if no significant cost incurred to get the speakers here)
• Frequency: Bi-weekly to start off, maybe switch to monthly after a while, depending on speaker lineup and/or interest UPDATED Start with monthly
• Local organizing committee: Led by Arno, with input from the Scientific Computing Steering Committee. These are the representatives of each directorate (http://www6.slac.stanford.edu/Directorates.aspx):
  • AD: Arno Candel
  • LCLS: TBD Igor Gaponenko
  • PPA: Richard Dubois and Norman Graf
  • Photon Science: TBD Chris O'Grady
  • SSRL: Henry van den Bedem
  • Randy Melen represents the Computing Division and Office of the CIO, formerly known as Scientific Computing and Computing Services (SCCS)
  • Tony Johnson, Travis Brooks and Bebo White have volunteered to assist the LOC as well
• Funds: We will need financial support for coffee, cookies, etc. (to be served after the talks to promote discussions) and also for taking outside speakers to lunch etc.  We agreed that the availability of these funds is critical to the success of this seminar series.  Tony Johnson suggested to just ask for $1 donations.
• Advertisement: Notices, Website - We expect to see a feature story on SLAC Today to announce the seminar series and the workshop.  Each seminar will then be announced on SLAC Today, SLAC web calendar, and via posters, mailing lists, etc.  Hopefully, there will be a strong unified presence for sci comp at SLAC's website in the future.
• Recordings: We agreed on the need for audio/video recordings.  Live webcasts are not intended at this point.

Proposed time line for the first 5 seminars (each from another directorate):

• End of April (or as soon as Amber is here):  1st seminar, also promote the upcoming workshop
• Mid of May: 2nd seminar
• End of May: sci comp workshop
• Mid of June: 3rd seminar
• End of June: 4th seminar
• Mid of July: 5th 4th seminar
• Summer break
• Fall: Resume on either a bi-weekly or monthly schedule

Actions:

• Arno to identify the remaining members of the seminar LOC and ask everyone to provide candidates for speakers for at least the first five seminars Partly DONE: Igor will represent LCLS, Chris O'Grady will represent Photon Science.
• Arno to contact SLAC Today to start planning for a feature story on the seminars DONE: Randy, Richard and I will contact SLAC Today at the beginning of April to write the article, to be published 2 weeks before the first seminar
• Richard to ask Persis about availability of funds for seminars DONE: NO FUNDS (SLAC policy) - need to find a way around that...
• Norm and Randy to remember and inform us about the reasons for the demise of the previous seminar series DONE: Propose to use a large pool of people to draw speakers from, and to make talks more general
  For later:
• Seminar recording availability
• advertisement details DONE: Contact InfoMedia (websiteservices@slac.stanford.edu) 2 weeks ahead of time for printing posters
• location reservation- ONGOING: Talked to John Skinner, need to book every even individually at the beginning of the month. As of Feb 14, Kavli auditorium availability for last week of April: Mon 8-5, Tue 8-12 and 4-5, Wed 8-13 and 3-5, Thu/Fri booked.