Collaborating & Co-Sponsoring

Steps for Starting Collaborations

*The following steps are intended for new comers to technical programming and should be used as a guide.  If and when you run into difficulties, it is best to contact Meeting Programming Chairs (MPC’s) or AIChE Staff assigned to a given meeting.  Usually, all the Divisions and Forums have programming chairs but only some Topicals have chairs.  Topicals are mainly handled through the MPC’s

1. Review the list of divisions, forums, and committees above, as well as the Topicals for the given meeting.
2. Determine which group you should collaborate with first using the meeting website to search for similar sessions. 
3. Contact the listed programming chairs (for Divisions/Forums) or MPC’s (Topicals) to determine if collaboration makes sense or not.
4. If and when questions arise or progress seems to be stalled, contact the MPC but only as a last resort after persistent efforts  with the divisional or topical contacts have apparently failed. Remember that like you these people are all volunteers and have very busy schedules
5. Attend programming meetings for the group/area and announce your interest in collaboration, telling them clearly what division/area you represent.  It is best to attend the programming meetings at least one year before your meeting, e.g., waiting till the spring meeting for the annual meeting in the same year (or waiting for the annual meeting for the spring meeting of the next year) is probably too late.  Provide business cards with your division/area written on the back.  Follow up after the meeting with email or phone calls. Establishing a face-to-face relationship will greatly facilitate future involvement but every initial personal contact needs to be solidified with some type of later follow up within a reasonable period of time (i.e., about a week or so after initial meeting).

Detailed Steps for Co-sponsorships

1. When entering sessions in your area on Confex, carefully consider co-sponsorship of sessions from other groups.
2. If you request co-sponsorship via Confex for a session, try to identify appropriate group/area chair and inform them of your interest in co-sponsorship because many times they are not listed in Confex.   Do not rely just on the session chairs.  If you need help, contact the division or forum chairs and they will put you in touch with the area chairs.
3. Once contact has been made with another group/area and co-sponsorship interest is present, make an effort for actual collaboration in the definition of the session, choice of co-chairs, potential merging of sessions from multiple areas. The most successful co-sponsored sessions will have active co-chairs from both groups that can assure that session content has strong appeal to both groups. This is not always possible and sometimes your first co-sponsorship with an area might just be an endorsement. However, this might lead to increased attendance at a session and further more substantial types of interaction.
4. If you are a group/area chair and co-sponsorship has been requested by some other area of one of their sessions, attempt to make direct contact with the area/group chair in question, and initiate collaboration beyond just leaving the co-sponsorship stand in Confex. Even if Confex may say that you do not need to anything if you accept, PLEASE follow through the contact directly in the spirit of true collaboration.