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Guidelines for short course organizers

Proposal deadline: 8 September 2017

Thank you for your interest in organizing a short course at the EGU General Assembly. The following guidelines can be of help when you organize your course:

  • Short courses can have one or maximum two successive time blocks free of charge from Monday to Friday. We also have a limited number of rooms for short courses on Sunday before the conference starts. Here priority will be given to full day short courses.
  • All short course participants and organizers must be registered for the General Assembly and pay the registration fee according to their category.
  • The number of short courses that can take place during the General Assembly is limited due to the limited number of rooms available. Short courses will therefore be selected according to the training that they are offering to the proposed participants and the diversity of the target group.
  • If appropriate, the SC Programme Group Chairs will seek to combine short courses with considerable overlap in content. However, this will not be done without first seeking the permission of the main conveners.
  • Short courses are expected to focus on skills/abilities that are related to science and research, or aim to provide training in skills needed by people working in science.
  • Organizers are free to select the content and organize the set-up of their course. The content should be of interest to (a subset of) the community that the EGU represents and must be accepted by the programme committee chair.
  • The courses are primarily aimed at providing a forum for individuals attending the General Assembly to teach their peers something of interest to anyone who is willing to listen. This means that courses preferably should not be connected, or only loosely connected, to any of the programme groups and that short courses are open to all conference participants.
  • No commercial activities are permitted during the course (e.g. sales). Courses on operating/running commercially available equipment or software are permitted.
  • Organizers are responsible for promoting their short course. The EGU will promote short courses by listing them in the online programme. Mailing lists cannot be provided because of data privacy.
  • Rooms (theatre style) are equipped with a microphone, a data projector, a notebook, wired internet connection, and a VGA switch to use up to three individual notebooks in addition to the permanently-installed one of that room.
  • Technical assistance is provided in each short course room.
  • Rooms are available for a fixed time period and need to be vacated by the end of the short course to allow the next event to set up.
  • A preference for time blocks, days and back-to-back scheduling can be indicated online in the session tagging tool (see Deadlines & milestones), but assignment depends on availability.
  • Short courses with more than 85 participants can only be scheduled in the 17:30–20:00 time block.
  • No admission fee or course fee is permitted for participation in a short course.
  • If registration to a short course is necessary (for example, for downloading prior information), the organizers are responsible for organizing the registration of their short course (e.g. by providing a registration email address in the description of the short course). This registration is for the actual attendance of the short course and does not supersede the general registration for the General Assembly.
  • Organizers can arrange catering at their own expense. The General Assembly caterer Motto Catering must be contacted by completing the Motto online ordering form by 31 March 2018 at the very latest.

Your short course request will be handled by the Programme Committee Chair and after acceptance will be included in the session programme by the SC Programme Group Chairs. However, please note that the final scheduling will be done at the Programme Committee meeting in February 2018.

The short courses are an addition to the scientific programme of the General Assembly. During time blocks 1 through 4 (with oral sessions in progress), they are offered in rooms that are not used for oral sessions. EGU is aware of the fact that short courses often attract larger audiences than the rooms can accommodate. In such cases, we can only suggest to run the course again at future General Assemblies.

Thank you for organizing a short course!

Short Course Programme Group Chairs: ECS Union representative and Sam Illingworth (contact: sc@egu.eu)