Per default, RSE leaders meetings should be planned to be hybrid (in-person and online). Online-only or in-person-only meetings can be considered if there are good reasons for plannin them this way.
The date should be chosen taking into to account national and regional public holidays, religious holidays, school holidays and other events (e.g. university term times) which can have an effect on the ability of members of our community to attend the meeting.
It is good practice to use a poll (posted on the UK RSE Slack leaders channel as well as the mailing list) to find a date that works for most.
The event should start not too early and end not too late, so that people are able to travel across the UK. 10am (with the first hour dedicated to arrival, coffee and networking, and the programme starting at 11am) to 4pm (with the opportunity to go to the pub together afterwards) seems to work well.
The location should be reasonably well connected to public transport, and hold enough space for 20-30 in-person attendees. There should be the possibility to break out into smaller groups (e.g. additional rooms or foyer space). A screen or projector is needed, and the ability for video conferencing (e.g. a meeting Owl or a room camera).
Different room layouts seem to work equally well: one big conference table, several group tables, or seminar-room-style rows of chairs.
The meeting should have enough coffee breaks for attendees to recover, and to network. Lunch should be provided if possible (otherwise let the attendees know in advance to plan for lunch).
Catering often needs numbers well in advance, therefore the registrations for in-person attendees has to close in time for that (normally around two weeks before the event).
Registration can be via a Google/Sharepoint form, Eventbrite (limited to 25 registrations of on free version!) or another alternative (https://ti.to/home, https://pretix.eu/about/en/, https://www.attendize.com/)
Make sure to ask for dietary as well as accessibility requirements.
Example agendas can be found on the RSE leaders meeting website when klicking on one of the previous meeting.
Common agenda items are
- the host gives an overview of RSE at their institution
- a keynote (does not need to be from the RSE community, but a relevant topic to the leaders)
- lightning/short talks
- discussions in the plenum
- group/breakout discussions
These are not prescriptive -- new ideas are very welcome!
It can take quite some effort to get contributions for the agenda. The RSE leaders are usually busy, and reluctant to prepare something that will take time. Therefore, shorter talks are more likely to be volunteered for than long talks, and other items that need less preparations are potentially more popular. Still, the organisers might need to approach people individually, as an open call in past seldomely yielded enough contributions. Again: new ideas and fresh approaches are very welcome!
- Set up online meeting for online participants
- Set up programme and adjust to available contributions
- Send out agenda and collaborative note-taking document, as well as description how to come to the venue
- Organise name tags (can be sticky ones that the attendees write themselves, bring pens in that case)
- Bring extension cables
- Arrive in advance to check that all the tech is working
- Check that catering is sorted (lunch and coffee breaks)
- Make sure that there are enough extension cables
- One person should be in charge of the online attendees, monitor the chat, make sure they are included. This can be one of the organisers, or another attendees (in that case, rotate the responsibility for each programme point)