Dear All, As a follow up to our meeting on Fri which several of you attended. You will receive an email to watch a recording of the meeting (if you so wish). Note the recording was started a few minutes in. I will summarize key points (also discussed before recording started) below. I will number points for ease of reply 1. @Thorsten & Michael. Would you mind sharing the sponsorship packages you offered last year and the year before (I think you both had some standard templates with “platinum”, “gold” and “silver” options) together with who accepted which? Using these as templates we can then throw together a “standard” to invite sponsors for this meeting. Also, if you could share any specific timelines you had in regard to planning/execution activities. We assembled a list of potential sponsors with persons who will contact in online doc (so we don’t contact same twice). If you have more ideas please add to list. 2. We addressed the issue of the exact involvement of Cellsense. It was agreed that they would be approached as regular sponsors and advertised as such (according to their sponsorship package). The idea of them contributing by offering social activities (such as a conference dinner downtown or other events) was proposed and well accepted. To this end a special package may need to be constructed and agreed upon, with any additional money in excess of the e.g. dinner going towards central/other organizing costs. One option, to avoid extra paperwork, could be proposing/agreeing with them to send invoices in the amount totaling their sponsorship package their way. Let me know your thoughts. 3. It was agreed at end of meeting that we should have the next meeting on 20/6/25 at 2pm (European Standard Time). Same Zoom link. Hope those not able to make last meeting can make this one. 4. We went through invited speaker ideas and added quite a few across the board on the document Robert created. Please add suggestions here also. Open questions are (a) how many we invite? (b) how much we reimburse (stipend? Hotel? Travel?). I think it goes without saying invited speakers should not pay registration. 5. Timeline: It was suggested/agreed we will try within reason to follow a similar planning timeline as in previous year(s). However, I believe we are a little on the late side (as we have not even opened abstract submission yet). I think it is important to move fast regarding initial phases, namely, relaying key dates/deadlines and conference general info not yet decided (registration costs), opening abstract submission, inviting sponsors, and broad publicity. I would proposed timeline (which can be amended based on feedback from Michael/Thorsten for planning in previous year(s)) as follows: 21/6/25 Updated webpage advertising conference on Biobrillouin page to (1) Look pretty with pretty pictures and description of even (what it is about etc.) (2) include all relevant deadlines including abstract submission deadlines and prospective registration opening (3) Abstract submission (could be as described below via simple emailing in a form available for download on this page) – but open to other solutions if someone can do. 20/6/25 Agree on sponsorship template and start sending out to potential sponsors. @Michael/ Thorsten could you send me last and before last years before 20th and I will amend as needed and can finalize on meeting on 20th. 20/6/25 Agree on registration Fee (and post on website). If we expect 50 people. A registration fee of 450 EUR would bring in only 22.5k EUR. Going much above this price will I fear reduce attendance. The costs for the venue and daytime meals amounts to about 18.4k netto (that is 22k after taxes) according to quote Jochen obtained. This makes things very tight, with little leg room. Sponsorships will be essential. The invited speakers will all need to essentially be paid from sponsorships (noting also that their registration is waivered). So 5 invited speakers require 5k sponsorship (if we go with 500 EUR stipend) etc. Assuming that Cellsense will sponsor dinner (with likely negligible left after), this all needs to come from other sponsors. I think with enough work we can bring in 10k in sponsor money, so we are talking up to max. 10 invited (more if we don’t offer stipend), but better to go on conservative side. This is all ok, but we are dealing with a very tight budget. Let me know your comments on these rough calculations and suggestions for amendments. 20/7/25 Registration opens 1/9/25 Soft closing of abstract submissions (with possible few day extension) 15/9/25 Notification of abstract acceptance. 6. Abstract submission. Now the quickest way to have people submit abstracts is to request that they download a word template that includes a couple of boxes/fields to tick/enter metadata in and insert title/abstract/authors/affiliations, and have them email it to a given address (could create one such as abstracts-biobrillouin25@biobrillouin.org ). Now this sounds like it will be a lot of sorting afterwards, but from experience it is not more work than if you would have people upload somewhere. Could even have automatic reply when people send mail saying thank you for submission etc., so they know it was received. This is very quick to implement – can open submissions next week literally. The alternative is the more usual filling in of an online form and uploading or copy-pasting abstract. With this new “Kirby” website software we now have I am not too familiar how to flawlessly create such an online submission system that then collates all the abstracts and metadata. Michael/Thorsten, would you maybe have some knowhow here and be able to help set up? (I don’t believe you did via Biobrillouin website last year). The ones from years before seemed to have different hosting platform (which I knew how to work with better). Else I might suggest the mailing in abstracts solution, since it is also less error prone. If anyone else has other solutions to this end please propose. 7. Registration This is distinct from abstract submissions and can be open later on (as people might also not want to register until they know their abstract is accepted). For this we definitely need some online form. Payment I think should be either via invoice or visa/mastercard if possible. For how and what we implement would be good to also get opinions from Michael/Thorsten? Maybe could bring in Kristie to help here also. I can also look into what is possible with website, and sure we can figure a way. Please post your opinions. So there is a lot of work ahead, and hope we can all catch up on 20/6 2pm. But in terms of splitting up the different tasks. I would propose the following. This needs to be a concerted effort given short time frame, and to make happen we all need to step up to the plate a bit. Regarding specific tasks for all of us: Stephanie & Robert: Could you help make realistic cost estimates for different scenarios. Thorsten: Could you provide info on last sponsor template and sponsor info Michael: Could you help make the webpage for registration/landing page cool with pics and all the required info when provided (I will send some proposals for text in next days) Francesca: Could you work on really pushing and already informally approaching sponsors By next Fri it would be good to have some of these thing ready to go/implement so can move to next stage, which should be more easy sailing. In particular I hope then we can have something to send out to invited speakers that we then agree on, official templates for sponsors, and agree on all the dates. All the best, Kareem