1. Indico: Event Management http://indico.cern.ch
JaCoW 09
2nd November 2009
Jose Benito Gonzalez Lopez
CERN IT-UDS
Audiovisual and Conferencing Services

2. Outline
General Overview of Indico
Events management
…and more

3. What is Indico About?
Event organisation: for events of all sizes: lectures, meetings, conferences
Data repository: Long term archiving of all data related to the event and of all related files (ppts, pictures, videos, minutes…)

4. Background CERN Need for a tool
2500 employees, 8000 collaborators
Huge number of meetings per day
175 meeting rooms
Need for a tool
to store and retrieve all events descriptions and related material
Provide synthetic views on the collaborative activities and easy integration with personal schedulers
InDiCo born as a European project ( )
From 2004 (CHEP), Indico is in production and developed at CERN

5. Indico Worldwide Indico team: Currently 1 staff, 1 fellow, 3 students
CERN server hosts today
events
presentations
files (several TBs of data)
Installed also in many organizations worldwide
In USA, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, India, China…

6. FEATURES

7. Features: Information Retrieval
One server hosts multiple events
Events are classified by categories
Simple browsing
Events of the day
Calendars
Search
Possibility to integrate an external search engine: a plugin exists for CDS Invenio (another CERN product!)
In general, the communication between the search engine and Indico is standard-based and uses an OAI gateway (OpenArchives Initiative)
Query sent to search engine and results displayed directly in Indico
Data export through script/web service
Various formats: XML, RSS, iCAL…

8. Creation of Events “New Indico” goal  user experience + optimization
Creation of events  easy
Customization  advanced options
3 types of events:
Lectures
Meetings
Conferences

9. Lectures

10. Features: Lecture Management
Simple and clear display of all data related to the lecture (date and time, location, title and abstract, speaker, material like slides or video)
Additional features:
Poster creation
Evaluation form creation (plus detailed result analysis)

11. Features: Lecture Management

12. Meetings

13. Features: Meeting Management
General data and meeting timetable
Additional features:
Integrated minutes management
Participants management

14. Features: Meeting Management

15. Conferences

16. Features: Conference Management
One tool only for managing the full event lifecycle
Creation, configuration and management of the conference web portal
Definition of the conference tracks/themes
Participants registration
Badge creation
Online payment
Mailings
Call for abstract
Abstract selection
Creation and display of the timetable
Plenary, parallel or poster sessions
Submission of presentations and final papers
Review and edition
Evaluation form
Creation of the conference proceedings

17. Features: Conference Management
Conference Portal: Customization

18. Features: Conference Management
Conference Portal: Total Customization

19. Features: Conference Management
Definition of the conference tracks/themes

20. Features: Conference Management
Registration
Flexible creation of forms
Epayment
Automatic printing of badges
Mailings and export in different formats

21. Features: Conference Management
Registration
Flexible creation of forms
Epayment
Automatic printing of badges
Mailings and export in different formats

22. Features: Conference Management
Call for abstracts
Abstract: a short version/summary of a scientific paper
Flexible creation of forms to submit abstracts
Abstract review process (coordinators)
Accepted abstracts will become contributions for the conference

23. Features: Conference Management
Call for abstracts
2) Authors submit their abstracts
Indico
Setup
4) Final decision
Event organizer
Track 1
Track 2
Track N
Abst 1
Abst n
Abst m
3) Track coordinators propose abstracts for approval

24. Features: Conference Management
Call for abstracts
Accepted abstracts … will become … Contributions
accepted
Abst 1
Contr 1
Contributions can be
scheduled in the
timetable

25. Features: Conference Management
Timetable: creation and display
Soon...drag & drop

26. Features: Conference Management
Timetable: creation and display
Filtering by session and room

27. Features: Conference Management
Evaluation Form
Flexible creation of forms
Statistics and graphics
Export in different formats

28. Features: Conference Management
Paper reviewing
Reproduce the paper reviewing process of a conference
Layout and content reviewing
notifications
Reviewing Team:
Layout reviewer
Content reviewers
Referee

29. Features: Conference Management
Paper reviewing
Conference Manager
assigns
Manager for Paper Review
assigns
Referee
assigns
Content Reviewers
Layout Reviewer

30. Features: Conference Management
Paper reviewing
Manager  Few steps to setup the module
Deadlines
Templates for the papers

31. Features: Conference Management

32. Features: Conference Management
Paper reviewing
Easy way to assign papers/contributions in batches

33. Features: Conference Management
Paper reviewing
Creation of competences for the team

34. Features: Conference Management
Paper reviewing
Definition of reviewing criteria:

35. Features: Conference Management
Paper reviewing
Final Judgment by referee

36. Features: Conference Management
Proceedings
Not at all…..but a collection of PDFs
To work in the future
Using SPMS?
For proceedings we need:
DB of authors
DB of affiliations
It would be possible to add this info to Indico! (Plugin)

37. More Indico

38. More Indico: Room Booking
Meeting room booking for all authorised users
Indico can plug into an existing database of rooms and/or bookings
Can handle room technical data of all kinds
Available equipment
Available services
Available tools …

39. Features: Room Booking

40. Features: Room Booking

41. More Indico: in Brief Internationalization Timezone management
English and French (Spanish, Portuguese, German, Chinese in preparation)
Timezone management
Fine-granularity protection setup
Delegation of responsibilities
Video services integration

42. A Hub for Remote Collaboration

43. You and Indico Open source code
Freely Downloadable from
Easy integration in the local environment
Interface customization
Pluggable authentication (LDAP, ActiveDirectory, SSO through Shibboleth…)
Links to and from external databases/services (rooms, booking, search)
Plug-ins administration
Modular architecture
Standards support: iCal, XML, OAI, RSS…
Support
Free through some administrators mailing lists
Paying support, hosted or on-premise installations and maintenance through commercial companies

44. Thank you for your attention!
Any questions?

45. Collaboration Tools/Services
Tools integration to Indico
Resource booking by the organiser directly through Indico
Connection data displayed in the Indico event page for the participants
Services integration
Video recording
Live Webcast
Service managers
A special page summarizes all requests
Service manager can approve or reject a request
Each tool/service is added as a plugin to Indico
Easy adaptation to local needs