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Rough guide for organising SPLS

What follows is a rough guide for organising SPLS. It is meant to provide guidance for how to plan and organise SPLS, but it is by no means absolute; please feel free to discard as much (or as little) of the advice as you want.

The date

You'll need to settle on a date. You can use scheduling tools to do this, but it is usually better to just pick one; SPLS happens frequently enough that missing one doesn't matter too much (the aim is to meet three times per year in February, June, and October, but we sometimes deviate from this schedule, e.g. due to pandemics or planning). Make sure to avoid overlapping with other Scottish PL events and PL conferences. Ideally, also avoid the submission deadlines of major PL conferences. It is probably wise to keep at least ICFP, OOPSLA, PLDI, and POPL deadlines in mind.

Duration

SPLS usually takes up half a day, starting with lunch at around noon, and ending with dinner and a pub social. Talks usually last 20-30 minutes (20 minutes with time for questions and changeover), with the exception of the invited speaker (if any), who might talk for longer.

The website

You'll need to update the SPLS website. This was previously hosted as its own thing, but it is now a subsection of the Scottish PL Institute (SPLI). If you are not already a member, you'll need to be added to the SPLI organisation on GitHub; try asking the organisers of the previous SPLS to add you.

Once you are a member you should have push-access to the SPLS repository. Now:

  1. Clone this repository (scottish-pl-institute/spls) and cd to it.
  2. Create a subdirectory for your meeting under meetings/<year>/<month>/, replacing <year> with the year of the SPLS and <month> with the name of the month of the SPLS. (See previous entries if you are uncertain about the format).
  3. Copy the previous SPLS index.html to your new subdirectory. We try to be consistent in the look and feel of the pages, but with varying success.
  4. Update the new index.html:
    • Remove the talks, but maybe keep one in a HTML comment (<!-- -->) as a note for how to add them.
    • Update the logo and name of your institution, as well as any supporting bodies who are sponsoring the SPLS (e.g. SICSA).
    • Update the date and time on the page to match what you have scheduled.
  5. Commit and push the changes. The GitHub CI will automagically deploy the page and update the "Forthcoming" and "Previous" sections as appropriate.

The announcement

You'll need to announce your SPLS. There are two places where you should announce an SPLS meeting:

  1. The SPLS mailing list.
  2. The SPLS Zulip.
    • Create a new stream for your event, for example #spls-2024-03.

You should include a registration form of some sort with your announcement, asking:

  • Does the person want to attend?
  • Does the person want to give a talk?
  • And, for in-person events:
    • Does the person want to join for lunch?
    • Does the person have any dietary restrictions?
    • If happening: Does the person want to join for dinner?

Anecdotally the most effective way of obtaining a response from the most people about attendance is to use a lightweight service such as Doodle (anything more heavyweight and many people are unlikely to respond). As well as being lightweight, systems like Doodle are also helpful for communicating to other attendees who else is coming and roughly how many people plan to attend.

The programme

  • Sometimes we receive lots of talk proposals; sometimes not. If there are too many proposals, then you can use your discretion to curate the programme. Ideally the programme should be diverse across multiple dimensions: affiliation, seniority, topic, theory vs. practice, etc. PhD students should be encouraged to speak as should speakers from industry. Those who have offered talks at previous meetings, but who were unable to give them because the programme was full should be prioritised.
  • If you receive too few proposals then send out another reminder in good time. It is worth contacting people individually, particularly if you know they're working on an area that is likely to be of interest to the SPLS community.
  • Once you have a few talk proposals, you can start putting together a programme. As mentioned earlier, talks should be roughly half an hour each, including questions, and there should be breaks every two to three talks.
  • You will also need to organise session chairs to keep time and ask questions if none are forthcoming. Typically, the organisers will chair some sessions.
  • Invited speakers aren't necessary, but if there are visiting researchers in Scotland at the time of SPLS (e.g. SICSA Distinguished Visiting Fellows), it is a good idea to invite them.
  • When held in-person, SPLS is typically an afternoon event starting with lunch. Sometimes the programme has extended a little into the morning, but it is important not to start too early in order to allow people to travel to the meeting in good time (ideally off-peak).
  • When held online it is best to err on the side of a shorter programme and to keep sessions short (ideally no more than 60 minutes with 30 minute breaks in between) in order to reduce digital fatigue.

Make sure to put your programme up on the website!

The place

There's a big difference between in-person and online events.

In-Person

The in-person meetings are hosted on the premises of the organising university. They start with a catered lunch and end with a dinner and pub social.

  1. Make a room booking with your university.
  2. Ensure you have funding for catering (lunch and coffee breaks). Your university admin staff should be able to get you quotes. In the past, attendance has been around 60 people. The best funding route is via SICSA theme event funding. If SICSA do not have funding, then it may be the case that your institution has some funding available, or you can try asking someone at your institution who holds an SPLS-aligned research grant. Make sure you acknowledge funders on relevant materials (website, signage, etc.)
  3. Make a lunch booking with your university catering --- make sure to pass on any dietary restrictions.
  4. Make a dinner reservation --- Decide on a restaurant, reach out to the restaurant to ask whether they can cater to people with the indicated dietary restrictions, and make a reservation for the number of people who have registered for dinner.

Online

Online meetings are hosted using a teleconference service (e.g. Teams, Zoom, Jitsi, etc) and live-streamed via the SPLS YouTube channel. Breaks and the post-seminar social take place in the SPLS pub on Gather Town. (The Gather Town link isn't published here, since the link itself provides access to the room. Ask the organisers of the previous online SPLS for the link.) After each talk, questions may be asked either directly via the teleconferencing service, or via the stream on Zulip. (You will need to create a fresh topic for each talk and monitor these if you are chairing the talk.) When asking questions via text chat, participants should be instructed to use the following convention:

  • If you would like to read out your question yourself (by unmuting), then prefix it with "Q:".
  • If you would like the chair to read it out, then prefix it with "SQ:" (silent question).

Template todo-list

Here is a template for all the steps you need to take in order to organise the online version of SPLS, along with rough guidelines for when these steps should be taken.

4 weeks prior

  • Check deadline for ICFP
  • Check deadline for OOPLA
  • Check deadline for PLDI
  • Check deadline for POPL
  • Decide on the schedule
  • Update the website with a new page for the event
    • Insert the schedule with placeholders
  • If online:
    • Get access to Zoom or other distribution platform
    • Get access to Gather
  • Get access to YouTube

2 weeks prior

  • Obtain title and abstract from invited speaker (if any)
  • Obtain title and abstract from the volounteered speakers
    • Get abstract and title from speaker 1
    • Get abstract and title from speaker ...
    • Get abstract and title from speaker n
  • Update website with speaker info
    • Update abstract and title from invited speaker
    • Update abstract and title from speaker 1
    • Update abstract and title from speaker ...
    • Update abstract and title from speaker n
  • Write reminder to the mailing list
  • Write reminder on the Zulip server

A couple of days prior

  • Send reminder email
  • Send reminded to SPLS-Zulip
  • Ask speakers about pre-meeting by email
  • Ask speakers about pre-meeting on Zulip
  • Make sure appropriate display adapters, dongles, etc. are available if need be. They are likely already in the lecture room, but might need requisitioning depending on your university.

On the day of the event

  • If in-person

    • Check the audio-visual setup, make sure you know how to change input sources etc. for switching speakers.

  • If Online

    • Check the speaker's setup, confirm their preferences for: streaming, recording, questions (do they want the host to relay questions from the chat or will they pick questions themselves? Do they want the audience to interrupt the talk or would they rather have the questions be held until the end?)

  • If ther are any online integrations, send the links ~30m before the event.

For each talk during the event

  • Create a new thread in the channel for the event.
  • Start the YouTube stream.
  • Share the YouTube stream on the SPLS thread for the talk.