Hello Anaheim Symposium Organizers,
With the abstract deadline a few days away (Monday, November 1, 11pm CT), activity is finally starting to pick up on the PACS site. I have attached an excel spreadsheet that lists the number of abstracts submitted to each symposium as of12:00 pm PTon Thursday, October 28 ("Anaheim ACS 2011 - Abstracts Submitted 10.28.2010.xls"). The minimum number of abstracts for ahalf-day sessionis 5, so if you do not have at least 5 abstracts in your symposium, this is your last chance to plead and beg for abstracts! All presenters MUST be in PACS in order to be included in the program.
Once PACS closes to authors, you will need to organize your symposia. Your symposia MUST be organizedBEFORE Monday, November 8. This means that you do not have a lot of time to organize your symposia in PACS. Here are the tasks you will need to complete. You can work on many of these right now, even before the system closes to authors (ie., numbers 1, 2, and 3). I highly suggest that you start work on this as early as possible. We have run into challenges with PACS, some of which take time to resolve. Please give yourself that time.
1. Review and accept abstracts. Please view each of the abstracts submitted to your symposium and accept those that are appropriate. I have attached a document with instructions about how to do this ("Symposium Organizer - Vieweing, Editing, and Accepting Submissions.pdf"). If an abstract has been submitted to your symposium that you do not feel is appropriate, you should contact the presenter as soon as possible to determine if they need to revise the abstract or if the abstract needs to be moved to another symposium. This needs to be done BEFORE PACS closes to authors on Monday. Do NOT reject abstracts. Work with the presenters to either modify the abstract to make it more appropriate for your symposium or to move the abstract to another symposium. I have attached an updated list of the available symposia and their abstracts in case you are unsure about where an abstract might fit.
2. Edit titles and abstracts. Please correct the formatting and any minor typos in the titles and abstracts you accept. For example, titles MUST be in sentence case and not bold. Some abstracts have extra line spaces in them that should not be there. Please edit each of the abstracts you have accepted to make them appropriate for printing. Information about editing titles and abstracts can be found in two of the attached documents: ("Symposium Organizer - Vieweing, Editing, and Accepting Submissions.pdf" and "Organizing your symposium using PACS.pdf").
3. Keep an external list of email addresses for all presenters whose abstracts you have accepted. You will need this list to contact your presenters once the schedule has been set.
4. Organize your symposium. Once PACS closes to authors, you will need to organize your symposium (i.e., add introductions and intermissions; put the talks in order). Instructions for doing this are found in the attached document "Organizing your symposium using PACS.pdf." The typical schedule for symposia is as follows:
--The standard talk time slot is 20 minutes (15 minutes for "talking" and 5 minutes for questions).
--The minimum number of papers for a half-day session is 5.
--The maximum number of papers for a half-day session is 9.
--Sunday - Wednesday, morning sessions start at 8:30am and finish by noon. Afternoon sessions start at 1:30pm and finish by 5:00pm.
--On Thursday, the morning sessions start at 8:00am and finish by 1:00pm.
--Each session starts with a 5 min introduction by the presider.
--There is a 10 min intermission after each set of three talks.
We will not know which sessions will be held in the mornings and which will be held in the afternoons until we see how many sessions there are; however, the general format for a symposium should be as follows:
Introductory Remarks (5 min)
Talk 1 (20 min)
Talk 2 (20 min)
Talk 3 (20 min)
Intermission (10 min)
Talk 4 (20 min)
Talk 5 (20 min)
Talk 6 (20 min)
Intermission (10 min)
Talk 7 (20 min)
Talk 8 (20 min)
Talk 9 (20 min)
The majority of sessions should be organized following this format and timing. If you feel that this format does not meet the needs of your symposium, let us know, and we'll work with you to meet your needs.
It's going to be a crazy week and a half! Please start looking at your symposia as soon as you can, and let me know if you encounter any difficulties.
Thanks again for all of the work that you're putting in to making the Anaheim CHED meeting a success!
MaryKay
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MaryKay Orgill, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Chemistry, Mail Stop 4003
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
4505 S. Maryland Parkway
Las Vegas, NV89154-4003
phone:(702) 895-3580
fax:(702) 895-4072
email: