David Judkins, JSM 2011 Program Chair
For those who enjoy tropical weather, sunny beaches, and trendy nightlife, Miami Beach, Florida, offers one of the best environments in the continental United States. Fortunately, that is where we are headed in 2011 for the Joint Statistical Meetings. (Let’s just hope the hurricanes give us a wide berth.)
It is time to start putting together your ideas for invited sessions. The theme for 2011 is “Statistics: An All-Encompassing Discipline.” I think it is a great theme, so let’s get some sessions about playing in other people’s backyards.
As all the old-timers know, it is a great pleasure and honor to be an invited speaker at JSM. These slots are always hard to get, but taking the initiative can work in your favor. If you have solid new work in an important field, know some of your competitors working in the same field, and are willing to reach out to them to forge a session with some energy in it, then you have a chance to snag an invited slot. You just need to put your ideas together and then find a section to sponsor you.
Invited sessions can be posters, papers, or panels. An invited poster session usually consists of 10 to 12 participants. An invited paper session includes two to six speakers and/or discussants. An invited panel session includes three to six members who are able to debate each other on a particular topic. Note that invited sessions with multiple papers from the same institution are discouraged. A topic-contributed session is more appropriate for single-institution sessions.
To propose an invited session, start by deciding on a theme for it. Then, shop your theme around the people you know are active in the area. You also can use specialized list servers for this purpose, but the quality of submissions tends to be more variable with that approach and you might end up in the awkward position of turning down ideas.
Once you have a theme and several top people interested in contributing to a session, write an abstract. The session abstract should briefly say why the theme is interesting and important, list the proposed participants, and, if necessary, support the participants’ qualifications to speak on the topic. The abstract may be accepted as-is by the program chair for your section, but there is a good chance it will be put to a vote by the entire JSM program committee. Members of the program committee won’t be familiar with every branch of statistics, so make the abstract resonate for everyone to have the best chance of success.
In addition to ASA sections, you may submit your ideas to the partner societies: International Biometric Society (ENAR and WNAR), Institute of Mathematical Statistics, Statistical Society of Canada, International Chinese Statistical Association, and International Indian Statistical Association. There are also ASA committees and outside organizations that may sponsor invited sessions.
Please keep the speaker guidelines in mind. They will be the same in 2011 as they are for this year.
Talk to potential speakers early and make sure they are not double committing. It is often difficult to find people who are doing new research, but are far enough along in that research that they are sure to be done by June of 2011. We don’t want invited papers that either encore results of 2010 or preview ideas for 2012. We want freshly completed important research for 2011.
If you have ideas that don’t fit any of the sections, you may send them directly to me at DavidJudkins@westat.com, but I have little latitude and will need to turn down most of, if not all, such submissions. Also, ideas for invited poster sessions should go to Benmei Liu at BenMeiLiu@hotmail.com.
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