MISTA Conference: Venue for 2011 announced

MISTA 2009 finished in the time honoured fashion of a social day. On this occasion it was a cruise down the River Liffey, followed by a two hour guided tour around Dublin, ending up at Trinity College Dublin (which, strangley enough is where MISTA 2009 started as it was the first place we visited when looking for a venue for the conference (in the end, we decided against TCD for various reasons)).

But, as the 2009 conference ends, planning for the 2011 conference begins.

So far, the conference has taken place in Nottingham (2003), New York (2005), Paris (2007) and Dublin (2009). At the conference banquet we announced that the 2011 conference will take place in Phoenix, Arizona. The conference will be chaired by John Fowler, Barry McCollm and myself.

Starting to plan two years in advance might seem excessive but we have found the further out you plan, the easier it is.

MISTA Conference: Plenary Talk (David Hine)

The last plenary at MISTA was given by David Hine. He is a sergeant with the Public Order Unit at New Scotland Yard (in particular Football Intelligence). His talk gave the delegates an overview of the issues and problems he faces in organising resources to police football matches in London, the wider UK and also when fans travel overseas (whether visiting other countries or fans coming to the UK).
He said that he wanted to take us into his world and also take us out of our comfort zone and he certainly did that, with some of the shocking videos that he showed. The feedback I received after his talk is captured by comments such as "an excellent presenter", "one of the best conference talks I have ever seen" and "it really brings home the impact that the schedules have on everybody's life."
I invited Dave to give the talk a few months back (after meeting up with him in London) and I would like to offer my personal thanks to him for taking a couple of days out of his busy schedule (and at the start of the football season) to give the talk to the MISTA audience.

MISTA Conference: Plenary Talk (Edmund Burke)

The MISTA conference had two plenary talks today (Raymond Kwan - see earlier blog) and Edmund Burke. Edmund's talk was entitled A Comparison of Two Methods for Reducing Take-Off Delay at London Heathrow Airport and focussed on his work (and Jason Atkin and John Greenwood) that investigates scheduling aircraft at Heathrow in preparation for take off.
The picture shows Edmund Burke (foreground) and Jacek Blazewicz (session chair).

MISTA Conference: Plenary Talk (Moshe Dror)

The MISTA conference is now well underway, after a busy morning. Our first plenary talk was by Prof. Moshe Dror (University of Arizona) and co-authored with George Steiner. His talk was entitled ‘Strong’-‘Weak’ Precedence in Scheduling: Extended Order Implications.
The picture shows Prof. Dror's talk.

MISTA Conference: Almost There

The MISTA conference is almost upon us.

It was an early start this morning (3am) in order to get to Dublin on the 06:35 flight out of East Midlands Airport. We were actually in the hotel by 09:00 and, thankfully, they had rooms ready so it was not too bad.

We spent the day getting things ready, as far as we could. The real work will start tomorrow and it looks like being a long day. I think we'll open the registration desk at 07:30 and we'll return from the Guinness Storehouse at around midnight.

In between that, we have a Plenary Talk by Moshe Dror ("‘Strong’-‘Weak’ Precedence in Scheduling: Extended Order Implications"), followed by 36 papers, split into nine sessions (the full program can be downloaded from here).

For me (and this is a personal viewpoint; not talking as the conference chair) the highlight is the Sports Scheduling session as this is a particular interest of mine, as you'll see from my previous blog postings. The papers in this session are:

• Mathematical Modeling for Maximising Gate Receipt Problem, Abdul-Hamid N.H., Kendall G. and Sagir M.
• A Heuristic for Minimizing Weighted Carry-Over Effects in Round Robin Tournaments, Guedes A.C.B. and Ribeiro C.C.
• Soccer Schedules in Europe: An Overview, Goossens D.R. and Spieksma F.C.R.
• Round-Robin Sports Scheduling from a Graph Colouring Perspective: A Case Study in Rugby Union Scheduling, Lewis R. and Thompson J.

... but there are many other excellent papers also being presented throughout the day and your preferences will depend largely on your research interests.

MISTA Conference: Program

With the MISTA conference just a week away (this time next week we'll be in the Guinness Storehouse for the reception) we have just released the scientific program.

The list of papers is available at

http://www.mistaconference.org/2009/programme/index.html

A PDF (more detailed) version can be downloaded from the same page (see the link at the top of the web page)

MISTA Conference: Proceeedings

I wonder if there is a good (and I mean simple) way to produce conference proceedings?

In a previous post, I was talking about the MISTA conference that I chair and that we were in the process of collecting all the papers and registrations. This is now done and, with the conference just a week away, we are trying to finalise the proceedings.

It could be worse. In 2003 we had hardcopy proceedings so we had to get things sorted out a lot sooner as we had to deliver the proceedings to the printers. At least, with the proceedings on CD, the timescales are not so tight and we are in charge of our own fate. On the downside you effectively have to develop another web site to enable the delegates to access the papers in a variety of ways.

But that is not the main problem (time consuming as it is). The main problem (at least for me) is three-fold

1. Ensuring that all the papers actually make it to the proceedings and that all the authors and titles are spelt correctly in the contents pages.
2. Making sure that the contents pages have the correct page numbers on (for reasons I won't go into now, it's important that we have page numbers).
3. Putting together an accurate author index so that authors can easily find their papers.

I have put together a number of conference proceedings in my time but I have never found a quick, simple and reliable of doing it, other than just taking your time and constantly checking that you have not missed anything.

Any suggestions welcome, for the next time.

MISTA Conference

Since 2003 I have chaired the Multidiscplinary Conference on Scheduling: Theory and Applications (MISTA). The first conference (2003) was held in Nottingham, the second (2005) was held in New York and the third conference (2007) took place in Paris.

The 2009 conference (the 4th in the series) is due to take place in Dublin (10th - 12th August 2009).

The conference is now only about eight weeks away and, as anybody knows who has organised a conference, it is a busy time for all concerned (both organisers and authors).

Our main efforts at the moment are being directed at ensuring that revised papers (taking into account the comments of the reviewers) have been uploaded and checking that each paper has an registered author.

Once we have registration/paper uploads resolved (in the next few days we hope), we will close the web site (we are using easychair) so that nobody tries to "sneak" in a late paper.

Then the task of producing the proceedings begins. This has to be done with great care as just a single mistake will haunt us forever.

Welcome

Welcome to my blog.

Through this blog I'd like to discuss areas that are related to my research interests.

I will post on an irregular basis as, I am guessing, that there will be more important things to do on many days but I hope to post regularly enough to make it worth visiting every so often.