Annual Report 2011: FY July 1, 2010-June 30, 2011
Technical Advisory
The Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) works with ACE and ICE Technical Program Committees (TPCs) to ensure a high quality technical program is presented at the respective annual meetings. To fulfill that role, the committee must represent a broad range of technical expertise from a representative group of industry and academic organizations. TAC also strives to develop broad geographic distribution, with a goal of having members that can interact closely with local organizing committees as they develop their technical programs. During the 2010–11 cycle, TAC added two new members, John Suter and Gretchen Gillis. Gretchen agreed to serve as co-chair of the committee. TAC activities included the following.
2010 Calgary ICE
Fran Hein served as the TAC liaison for this meeting and was heavily involved in planning and organization. She presented insights to the process, including the abstract reviews, at the TAC annual meeting in Houston. Her summary was distributed to committee members and included a number of suggestions for improving key processes. TAC members reviewed abstracts prior to the meeting and either served as session chairs or helped to find volunteers for session chair duty. The abstract reviewers reported difficulties such as abstracts being assigned to the wrong sessions, difficulties in identifying student submittals, low rankings of submittals by non-native English speaking authors, and the need to tweak the “anonymous” review process.
2011 Houston ACE
We held our annual Technical Advisory Committee meeting in conjunction with the Houston ACE. Twenty people attended the meeting, including those involved with the planning and execution for the Calgary and Houston meetings, and those involved in the preparation for the meetings scheduled in Milan, Long Beach, and Pittsburgh. Discussions focused on ways to help local committees prepare for their meeting, and issues relating to abstract review and selection. Linda Sternbach presented a document that captured the Technical Program Committee’s experiences and provided a number of suggestions for future organizers, most of which focused on meeting themes and theme chairs, poster sessions, and critical deadlines.
2011 Milan ICE
Philippe de Clarens is the TAC liaison and AAPG Vice Chair, and Pinar Yilmaz serves on the Technical Program Committee. The program features 7 themes and will have over 500 presentations. TAC members assisted with abstract reviews and session framing. We expect Milan to be a very successful meeting.
2012 Long Beach ACE
Dalton Lockman and Dan Schwartz serve as TAC liaisons for this meeting. Themes and theme chairs have been chosen and the Call for Abstracts is currently open. We expect that TAC members will be involved in the abstract review process, and some have been identified to assist with field trips and short courses.
2012 Singapore ICE
We expect to begin involvement with the Singapore group in the summer of 2011.
2013 Pittsburgh
Tim Carr attended the TAC meeting in Houston and is beginning his organizational efforts as Technical Program Chair.
A sub-team was organized during the Houston TAC meeting to examine procedures for abstract review, beginning with what constitutes a good abstract. Gretchen Gillis, Peter Henning, John Suter, and Steve May are considering making recommendations to improve the abstract review and selection process to build stronger technical programs.
Gretchen Gillis and Jon Schwalbach, Co-Chairs
Committee members:
Samuel Olusegun Akande, Sumit Bhardwaj, Philippe de Clarens, Arthur Dean Donovan, Gretchen M. Gillis (co-chair), Michael Robert Gross, Frances J. Hein, Elsa Jeanneth Jaimes, Rami Ahmed Kamal, Dalton Fredric Lockman, Steven Robert May, Rohit Mohanty, Miguel I. Mora-Glukstad, Ronald Alan Nelson, Christopher Alan Presmyk, Jon R. Schwalbach Jr. (co-chair), Daniel Evan Schwartz, Stephen A. Sonnenberg, John Robert Suter, and Pinar Oya Yilmaz