Fellow time-nuts,
I thought I share some experiences from working inside a conference,
because it may be of some interest to you.
Two of the conferences for time and frequency, atomic clocks etc. is the
International Frequency Control Seminar (IFCS) and the European Time and
Frequency Forum (EFTF). These are sibling conferences in US and Europe
respectively. Every other year they have a common conference and then
this is alternating sides of the pond. I've been going to both of these,
but mostly EFTF. IFCS is a conference under IEEE UFFC, which is the IEEE
society under which time and frequency work is held.
This year I got nominated/pulled into the Joint Technical Program
Committee (JTPC) for Group 2 of Microwave measurement. That is where you
find many of the normal "electric" oscillators (as compared to optical
clocks), measurements and related. This was on request of the Group 2
vice-chair (that is vice-chair of JTPC, responsible for Group 2) Craig
Nelson of NIST.
This is the first time I do this kind of work, so it is interesting to
go through the process. It is also interesting in that I file abstracts
myself, so do many others. The process is such that as a reviewer, you
get assigned a bunch of papers. The process is such that you should
never review yourself, which is good. I got to review 36 papers, and
eager to do a god job I was done the first week of the 30 day window. As
you review abstracts, you have to read them and there is several things
to think about. I sure learned some and will take experience with me for
next year. In the end, the scores from all reviewers is weight together
and from that you get a pretty good overview about the papers. Some of
these papers we are forced to reject for various reasons.
Also, we then have to figure out if they should go for lecture
presentation or poster presentation. The concept of poster presentation
may not be all that familiar, because what most people think of as a
presentation is that you stand up and talk before a sitting audience
which is the lecture presentation, where as for poster presentation you
have your material up as a poster and then during the poster
presentation sessions, lasting several hours, people walk around and
then you discuss and explain your work and answer their questions.
The student papers all go into poster presentation. Some student papers
looks really good and is promoted to also do lecture presentation. We
also the nominate what looks like the most promising student papers for
a special process where a selected set of judges goes around and listen
to the student poster presentation, and then elects a winner. The winner
from each group is traditionally announced and receive the hours and
applauds at the social dinner for the conference. This is part of how
this community celebrate good student efforts, and often it is clear
that they distinguish themselves. It is always a joy to celebrate their
efforts!
Then comes the task of combining together all the lecture and poster
presentations into session blocks, assign names to these sessions and
nominate moderators for the sessions. It can be a bit hair-pulling at
first, but eventually the pieces fit together and we figured out the way
that our group would assign these sessions. We where quite satisfied at
the end.
When all 6 groups have done that, we then combine our sessions to try to
make the big puzzle going, putting these sessions in the programme of
the conference. This is complex since for instance, you do not want to
have the same group of people want to choose too much about which tracks
they would have to go to. As a normal visitor, you sometimes wonder why
they scheduled things the way they did, and it turns out... well, it's
kind of hard and complex. There was a lot of conflicts to consider. In
the end we felt relatively satisfied, but some conflicts will always be
there and we just try to avoid the worst of them.
The currently on-going partial shutdown of the US government where not
helping, so we where missing a lot of people. I ended up being the only
one physically present in my group, but through phone conference we
where able to get work done. It could have gone smoother, but everyone
understood the issue and with help we achieved it. That part turned out
to work quite well for what ended up to be a 2-person group that I was
in, we where very efficient during the circumstances and had good
discussions resulting in a result we both where happy with.
There will lots of final touches before the decisions goes out end of
next week, but the rough plan is there.
So far, this have been a very interesting experience, it is a nice way
to give back to the community to serve on such committee work, and I
have already said that I will be willing to do more of it. In fact, I
will be doing some more already at the conference.
I know of at least three time-nuts contributing abstracts to the
conference, including myself. I will not disclose what I know happen to
those contributions. That will have to go out through the official
channels, which is coming out soon enough anyway. I have to wait too, to
see how my contributions went through.
The three big things at these conferences is the many optical clocks,
the optical comb range of uses and then frequency and time transfer,
especially optical. The optical side is really undergoing a huge
revolution, and we already start to see spin-offs into other areas.
Classical atomic clocks has also started to become interesting,
including various forms of sensors, such as magnetometers etc. Much of
the things we hobbyist look at is off to a few of the smaller fields in
a conference. However, it ends up being that the many pieces is needed
to form the full field, and each contribute to extend it's part of the
field.
This years conference will be in Florida, so for me this trip is the
first time I'm in Florida for real. Changing planes in Miami does not
really count. Earlier this week I was supposed to do a two-day event at
NIST in Boulder and, well, that didn't really work under the
circumstances, but I met some friends, including fellow time-nut Tom
Knox, and we had a good time, so it was not completely wasted. I was
offered a chance to present at NIST, but it became clear last week that
there would be no chance for that this time. I will continue to work on
that presentation, it will be fun. As I spent a week around New Years
Eve at Bob Camps house, I did the major work on that one, with good
input from Bob.
Tomorrow I will present on the Stable32 future, which is will be a topic
for another email to report on events. Again a range of time-nuts is
involved and supporting this effort. The boundaries between the
hobbyists and professionals can be encouragingly thin at times.
Lastly, let me say that it is humbling to work with these people and get
recognized for once contributions. Being able to take on some of these
chores for the benefit of the community and also enjoy it clearly is
worth it for me at least.
Cheers,
Magnus
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