Information for 2022 Programme Committee members

Thanks for your interest in what’s involved in being a member of the 2022 PC. Here is some background information on what will be involved, and how we think NACAA will run post-COVID. In case you haven’t heard, the next NACAA will be held in central Melbourne, April 15-18 2022. The primary purpose of the PC is to organise the content of the event to ensure its quality. There are various activities during each NACAA — keynotes, symposia, workshops, round-tables, posters, and regular presentations (talks.) The scheduling and content of the symposia are done by their organisers. The rest of the programme is the PC’s responsibility. There will be various Calls for Presentations over 2021/2 — major events (symposia and workshops) around May, presentations around October, posters around February. For each of these, the PC needs to review the submissions for quality control, and perhaps work with the authors to improve their presentation. That’s the reason we need PC members with diverse astronomical interests. I hope the members may also suggest speakers we might approach to participate. Almost all of this work will be done via email. I don’t think we’ll need more than one or two “meetings.” Other work, such as scheduling the programme, will be done by yours truly. In previous years, PC members also chaired one or two sessions. I hope that you guys are willing to attend and help out. Extra bonus points if you’re able to help with the technical side of broadcasting NACAA. 2022 will be our first NACAA in this post-COVID world. The NACAA INC committee has discussed the impact this will have. INC understands that NACAA will have to offer an on-line presence in 2022. Because of this and COVID, our hunch is that we may only have half the physical attendees we would have had in previous years. This may apply to presenters too, though I am going to strongly request that the presenters physically attend if at all possible; managing a herd of remote speakers will be challenging at best. But at this stage we are only guessing. How many virtual attendees will we have, for example? INC will do some surveying during 2021 to get a better understanding of the situation. Thanks again for your interest. Stephen Russell. PC Chair, NACAA 2022.