IRIDIA Seminars

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Description

This responsibility comprises the management of the Seminar Room schedule and the announcement of official Iridia Seminars. You must:

Calendar tasks and seminar room booking

The seminar room is booked for different events during all year, this events could be:

  • Iridia seminars
  • Optimization seminars
  • Robotics seminars
  • Courses or lectures
  • Meetings and others (other presentations, rehearsals, celebrations, etc..)

The calendar is composed of different sub calendars that organize the events:

  • All events (this is the "empty participant" you find when adding a new event): all the events relevant to Iridia, even is they are not located in the seminar room.
  • Seminar Room: all the events located in the seminar room.
  • IRIDIA Seminars: external iridia seminars.
  • Optimization Seminars
  • Robotics Seminars

When adding any event in the calendar:

  1. If is in the seminar room check availability in the calendar.
  2. Complete the information required.
    1. If you don't have any information of the event write in the Full Description field the name of the person who will be responsible for this booking.
    2. Complete the brief description field following, if possible, the standard:
      1. Iridia seminar: [SEMINAR@IRIDIA] FirstName LastName: Title of Seminar
      2. Optimination seminar: [OPTIMIZATION@IRIDIA] FirstName LastName: Title of Seminar
      3. Robotics seminar: [ROBOTICS@IRIDIA] FirstName LastName: Title of Seminar
      4. Courses: [COURSE@IRIDIA] Course name
      5. Other events: [BOOKED] Event name / Responsible Name
    3. Select the calendars that are concerned in the participants tab. ATENTION: for all events select the "empty participant", this is the public calendar that is displayed as All events on the calendar header. If the event is in the seminar room add the "Seminar Room" participant.
      1. Iridia seminar: "IRIDIA Seminars", "Robotics calendar", "Optimization calendar", "semAdmin"
      2. Optimization seminar : "Optimization calendar", "semAdmin"
      3. Robotics seminar: "Robotics calendar", "semAdmin"
      4. Courses and other: "semAdmin"


How to Manage Iridia Seminars

When scheduling an Iridia seminar you can ask the speaker or the responsible of the seminar to complete the New Seminar Form, an xml description will arrive to you mail with the information of the seminar. The IRIDIA seminars can be divided into two main types: internal seminars (IS) and external seminars (ES). Note that each class of seminars need a slightly different management procedure.

  1. Ask for confirmation of the seminar date and time to at least one person from MD, MB, or TS.
  2. Add an entry to the IRIDIA Seminar Database (only for ES):
    1. Create a folder on your PC called "seminars/"
    2. Copy the semPush script to "seminars/"
    3. Create an xml file containing the xml received by email "FirstnameLastname.xml".
    4. Execute "./semPush FirstnameLastname.xml" from a terminal
    5. Check on IRIDIA Seminars List that the entry has been successfully added
  3. Update the IRIDIA's Calendars and book the seminar room:
    1. Login into the system
    2. Add an entry into the seminar for the requested date using the format explained previously.
    3. If the location is the IRIDIA Seminar room then fill the 'Location' field of the calendar with 'SEMINAR ROOM, IRIDIA'.
    4. Always use timed events and remember to add the duration of the event
  4. Send reminders for the seminars (only in case of ES)
    1. Login into the IRIDIA server
    2. Send new seminar comunication (where <key> is a date in the format YYYY-MM-DD): "./semMail -s -m <key>"
    3. Send reminder: "./semMail -s -r <key>"
    4. Ensure that the semMail script has a seminar admin email address as sender!

Some notes about announcing seminars

  • To be able to send emails to the Seminars mailing list you need to have the flag "mod" not checked in the Membership Management section of the Seminars mailing list.
  • Your email address needs to be subscribed to the list of forwarded addresses of "semAdmin@iridia.ulb.ac.be". Ask the administrator of iridia.ulb.ac.be if you need to be added.
  • Make sure your email is configured as the sender in the semMail script ($from_address = 'Leslie Perez Caceres <lperez@iridia.ulb.ac.be>';).

Some notes about the Calendar software

  • We are using WebCalendar. The current version is probably very outdated and may be a security risk. It should be (carefully) updated to use the version current in Debian, so it receives automatic security updates.
  • It would be ideal to find a way to add events directly from a script, so many steps above could be automated. It should be possible, since it is possible to add events from external applications. However, how to do it from a script is not clear. Someone will have to read the WebCalendar documentation to find out how to do it.

Useful Links

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