Technical Program
The web site for submitting papers is open and receiving papers. There are only a few days left before the Dec 8th deadline, so submit your papers now to avoid the last minute crunch and the oversights that sometime come along with last minute submissions. In this issue we will describe the revamped Microwave Week schedule. We have found a way to allow more time for attending technical papers, visiting the industrial exhibit and interacting with colleagues – almost like adding more hours to the day!
One of the biggest dilemmas in attending the International Microwave Symposium is finding time to attend a large portion of the technical sessions, spend time at the industrial exhibit to learn about new products, discuss your needs with vendors, and to interact with colleagues from around the World. We have done two things to address this issue during the 2009 IMS in Boston. The first is to organize the technical program into focus tracks so it is easier to find the technical content of interest to you. These focus tracks are: Active Components, Microwave Modeling, Passive Components and Microwave Systems. The focus tracks were described in the September issue of the IMS Insider. The second change is an adjustment to the Microwave Week schedule, and this is the subject of this month’s article.
Adjustments to the schedule have been made both for the arrangement of the events during the week and the daily schedule. First we will describe the arrangement of the events during the week.
- To begin, the plenary session will be held Monday evening prior to the traditional Monday evening reception. The RFIC Conference has successfully done this for the past few years. Most attendees are already at the symposium attending workshops, the RFIC conference or just arriving during the day Monday. Holding the plenary session just before the reception is an excellent combination, and it allows more time for technical papers Tuesday morning.
- Next, we are reducing the number of papers with similar technical content being presented at the same time. With the focus track arrangement of papers, we can spread the technical content more uniformly throughout the week.
- The Wednesday Industry hosted reception will be held on the exhibit floor. In addition to usual opportunity to interact with colleague, this venue provides another opportunity to visit the exhibits as well as socialize with vendor colleagues.
- Finally, there is a new Thursday evening social to provide a final opportunity to socialize with colleagues before the symposium concludes on Friday.
Now we will describe the adjustments to the daily schedule.
- The overlap between the oral paper and the interactive forum paper presentations has been removed. The oral sessions have been shorted to permit an hour break between the two oral sessions in the morning and the two oral sessions in the afternoon.
- The interactive forum papers will be located near the oral sessions so that it is easier to attend. Also, the interactive forum papers will be left up all day with the authors present during both the morning and the afternoon breaks. So, if you want to visit the industrial exhibit during one of the breaks, there is still an opportunity to discuss the interactive forum papers with the authors during the other break.
- Lastly, there will be breaks placed in the focus track schedules where no oral papers are presented. This will provide an opportunity to visit the industrial exhibit.
We believe that these adjustments will make it easier to juggle the competing activities. However, we would like to have your feedback and will provide several opportunities to give it. We will cover this in a future addition of the IMS Insider.
In next month’s news letter, we will describe the workshops and information posted on the web site that will help you decide which workshops to attend.