Steven N. MacEachern, 2012 JSM Program Chair
The 2012 Joint Statistical Meetings will be held in San Diego—a sunny, temperate city on California’s southwestern coast. In addition to a wonderful climate, San Diego features many attractions and a large turnout is expected. The time has come to put together proposals for invited sessions.
The theme for 2012 is “Statistics: Growing to Serve a Data-Dependent Society.” The theme captures the tremendous impact our profession has on modern society via modeling, understanding, and analysis of data throughout scientific research, governmental policymaking, and decisionmaking in business and industry. It also captures the dynamic growth being driven by the new types, increasing complexity, and ever-expanding volume of data we collect, as well as our ability to process these data.
JSM invited sessions are always a highlight of the program, featuring cutting-edge work and attracting sizeable crowds. Most invited sessions spring from proposals put together by members of the sponsoring societies—that means you! Invited sessions can be posters, panels, or talks. For an invited panel, the session consists of three to six people who provide commentary, discussion, and engaging debate on a particular topic. An invited paper session consists of two to six people, including speakers and discussants.
The ideal invited session is about fresh, important work that many JSM attendees will find interesting. Many of the most stimulating sessions have divergent views on a topic, with all speakers coming from different institutions. With the wide-ranging interests of attendees, you will need a theme and set of participants to organize a session. Once these are set, you can put together a proposal consisting of the title, a brief abstract for the session as a whole, the list of participants, and tentative titles of talks (and, yes, all are aware that the talks are a year off and that titles may change). From there, contact a member of the 2012 JSM Program Committee to see if they are willing to sponsor the session. They may accept the session outright for one of their allocated slots, or they may enter it into a competition, where selection is decided by a vote of the entire program committee.
The program committee includes the program chairs for the ASA sections and representatives of 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. A list can be found at the ASA website. If you have ideas that don’t fit these sponsors, you may send them to me at snm@stat.osu.edu, although I have little discretion and will need to turn down most, if not all, such sessions. You will need to have your proposal ready by early September.
A particular highlight of recent JSMs has been the high quality and visibility of the poster sessions, where presenters have an opportunity for more extended one-on-one discussion of their work. Poster sessions come in two flavors—contributed and invited. An invited poster session typically consists of 10 to 12 participants whose work addresses a common theme, and many have been great community-builders. Ideas for invited poster sessions should be sent to Kristin Duncan at duncan@sciences.sdsu.edu.
The ASA has strict rules for participation, and they will be the same in 2012 as they are in 2011—please see the official guidelines. Talk to potential speakers to ensure they are not “fishing for an invitation” by committing to more than one invited proposal. If you don’t find success with your proposal, try again in the future, as there are always more fine sessions proposed than can fit into the program.
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