Symposium proposium

Since a few of you seemed interested in the process of proposing a symposium, I thought I’d write a post about it. I spent a lot of time struggling with it this week, so I’d like to talk about it here anyway. I am working on this proposal with a collaborator, Cauliflower, who works in another state and just recently finished her Ph.D.

I’m sure the way that symposia make it into meetings varies dramatically among societies. For this particular society, anyone can propose a symposium topic. Proposals are comprised of a 400 word description, a 250 word justification, and a list of speakers. They are due 11 months before the meeting. They are competitive; however I do not know the success rate. I do know that some symposium ideas are rejects and some end up as the less prestigious but similarly formatted Organized Oral Session.

This society is divided into subject sections that can endorse one symposium proposal and provide secondary endorsements for two more. This doesn’t ensure success, but it helps. There are two relevant sections for us, one of which had already committed to another proposal but agreed to give a secondary endorsement, and another that wants to evaluate all ideas it gets before it decides on one. If that section decides not to endorse our idea, I think we will try for an OOS. This is fine, but it appears to be a little less credit for about the same amount of work.

So, what’s the work we have to do? Well, first we pitched the idea around to our colleagues to see if it was something they thought would generate interest, be appropriate for this particular society’s meeting, etc. They liked it, so we crafted an email with a brief description to send to the section chairs. They liked it, so we began working on the proposal itself. We wrote a draft that we sent to Academic Advisor (who is very good at this sort of thing and did one himself a few years ago). He suggested some retooling.

It’s rather difficult to write about a big (sort of technical) knowledge gap in less than 400 words that will appeal to a broad swath of a large society. We had identified a good problem, but needed to state it more broadly. And we hadn’t really said what we hoped to achieve with the symposium -- how we would address/solve the problem. On top of that, Cauliflower is currently overseas working with collaborators, so there is a big time change that is inhibiting our communication. Both of us really struggled with the ideas this week, but after much back and forth I finally emailed what I think is a much better draft to Cauliflower last night. If she likes it, I’ll send it to our advisors for comments. We need to have a pretty final version finished early next week to submit to the subject section chair.

Okay, what else? We have to work with the section chair who happens to be a big famous scientist who I have never met (Cauliflower has) and intimidates me somewhat. Then we have to invite all the speakers, some of whom we know and some we don’t. The more speakers we have committed, the better. Some are famous big-wigs and some are quite early career. This is scary. However, it is exciting to have a reason to contact people I’d like to know. I think this is a major benefit of trying for a symposium, even if it is unsuccessful. I also think this is the part that will foster the most growth for me. If our symposium is selected, we have to write a short blurb for the program, work with the speakers to make sure they know what we want from their talks, make sure they get their abstracts in, and run the show the day of the session.

There were some comments alluding to the fact that it is surprising for students to be taking on a symposium proposal. That’s true – I fear I’m just at the brink of having bitten off more than I can chew – this is very challenging for a grad student and early post doc. However, the society always wants to encourage participation from new scientists so our proposal will actually be favored to some extent because we are so early in our careers. I think we have good people around us who think our idea is good and will help us along or at least keep us from falling on our faces. Let's hope, anyway.