All potential organizers must submit an application and proposal to the BIRS Scientific Advisory Board. Information on this process is found on the BIRS website, as well as updated calls for proposals and deadlines. Please consult our “For Applicants” section at: http://www.birs.ca/applicants/guidelines

The organizer interface is an online program that allows all organizers to manage the various events that they are planning. Through the interface, organizers can access lists of invitees, see breakdowns of who is attending workshops (or not) etc. It is very important that organizers check their interface accounts regularly, particularly in the early stages of the invitation process, as invitations cannot be sent out to potential participants until all of the invitees’ relevant information (names, email addresses and so on) has been entered into the interface by the organizer him/herself and the draft list of invitees has been confirmed by him/her. Please always send the BIRS program coordinator (birs@birs.ca) a note when new invitee information has been entered into the interface so that we know when and how to proceed.

Go to https://www.birs.ca/orgs and click on “Create Account”. Set up a username and password, which you can use to log into the interface every subsequent time. Be sure to use the same email address in logging into the interface as you used in registering for the workshop. This will allow the system to identify you as an organizer.

Organizers are tasked with making initial invitee lists and entering all potential invitee information (names, email addresses etc) into the organizer interface. All invitees must be initially classified as either “participants” (maximum 42 in most cases, but check the event details beforehand, because sometimes the maximum number of participants allowed is smaller) or as “back-up participants”. When this has been completed, send the BIRS program coordinator (birs@birs.ca) a quick note. We will send you back a confirmation before we send out official invitations from our central database.
Through your interface account you can track the number of people who accept or decline invitations. After a time, we may prompt you to choose some of the people from your “back-up participants” list to become formal, invited potential participants. We will then send out a second round of invitations on your behalf.

Please visit this link for information on planning your 5-day CMO-BIRS Workshop.

Please visit this link for information on processes to complete after your 5-day CMO-BIRS Workshop.

Workshop participation is by invitation only. Individual workshop organizers are responsible for drafting lists of potential invitees, not CMO or BIRS directly; however, if you are interested in participating in a particular workshop you can email a BIRS administrator, who will forward your statement of interest to one of the organizers involved. If you are a student we recommend sending a letter of recommendation from your supervisor along with your initial email.

BIRS is unfortunately unable to do this, for a number of reasons, particularly due to the sheer volume of information that we require from all participants, compatibility with our online database, and the occasional need for very prompt replies. If a participant is unable to be reached by email on a regular basis, he/she should contact his/her workshop contact organizer to make alternate arrangements.

You can email the BIRS Program Coordinator at: birs@birs.ca.

It is important for BIRS administrators to know who is attending any given workshop well in advance of the workshop itself. This allows us not only to think about room allocation and meal plans, but also to potentially invite more people to join the workshop, if definite places remain. As such, we would ask that you respond to all of our emails as promptly as possible; however, we understand that it can be difficult for some people to commit to certain workshops so early on, especially if traveling from abroad. We would ask that if you are unable to give us a definite answer before the deadline, you write to us to tell us so, stating your reason for delay and when you are likely to know by. This will greatly facilitate our planning! We will forward your email to the appropriate organizers.

If you think you haven’t received information from BIRS that you ought to have, we recommend first checking your spam/junk mail folder. Should that fail, please contact us for any missing information at: birs@birs.ca.

BIRS administrators post detailed schedules and abstracts for workshops to the website as soon as they are made available to us. These can be found by going to http://www.birs.ca/location/cmo/2020/all. Select the year of the event you will be attending in the scroll-down menu at the top of the page. By clicking on the code next to the title (ex: 12w5083) you will be brought to the workshop-specific homepage. There you will find any schedules or abstracts that have been posted.

Yes. The following instructions explain how to publish files related to your workshop on the workshop web page: https://www.birs.ca/cmo/publishing-cmo-slides.

You can find old workshop reports online at: http://www.birs.ca/reports. Bear in mind that your audience are scientists.

The benefits of testimonials are three-fold.

1. For participants, they provide an opportunity to think back on the past few days and to recall and organize one’s thoughts on what was learned throughout their time at CMO.
2. For the workshop community at large, they enable people to see what stood out to their colleagues in each workshop; their colleagues may perhaps emphasize important aspects of the week they hadn’t before considered to be of note.
3. For BIRS and CMO, feedback helps us to see our strengths and our weaknesses. Positive testimonials also enable us to show our sponsors that the funds they have granted us are being put to good use. Testimonials are invaluable to us in the funding renewal process and participants’ taking the time to write one is thus very much appreciated!

You may be contacted directly by email by our Scientific Director, requesting you to give us your input. If so, a link should be included in the email and you need only follow the steps as they appear.
If this is not the case, you can access a simple testimonial-writing page via our website at https://www.birs.ca/feedback.

The content of a testimonial is largely up to you. Some people choose to write long paragraphs, while other people simply jot down a sentence or two. You can reflect upon the organization of the workshop, the setting and facilities in Oaxaca, the mathematical and scientific aspects of your specific workshop, or whatever else you deem to be appropriate. There are some guidelines on what to include as potential “scientific content” on our online testimonial-writing page at: http://www.birs.ca/feedback. You can see examples of testimonials by following the link on the BIRS homepage, where we publish excerpts of testimonials for the various workshops held in our facilities at http://www.birs.ca/testimonials/cmo. We endeavor to preserve the integrity of each testimonial, although we reserve the right to occasionally edit for grammar, clarity or anonymity, where appropriate.