Duties and Responsibilities of Program and Local Arrangements Chairs
1. Soon after the current year's annual meeting is concluded, the local arrangements chair will choose a date for the next conference. The chair will make sure the time does not conflict with other major events locally (such as homecoming celebration when hotels may be difficult to book), or regionally (such as other Asian studies conferences).
2. As soon as possible in the new year, the local arrangements chair will decide on the conference venue, will make arrangements with the host institution, including financial assistance, will arrange for meeting room space, meals, receptions, registration, exhibits, hotel accommodations, and staffing.
3. The program chair will send to the secretary-treasurer by March 1 a call for papers, to be distributed by the secretary-treasurer to all members by March 15. In the call for papers, the program and local arrangements chairs will provide email and postal addresses, office telephone numbers, and FAX numbers where they can be reached.
4. When paper and panel proposals are received in late spring and early summer, the program chair will acknowledge receipt in a timely manner.
5. The program chair will evaluate proposals, decide which are acceptable, then inform applicants. The letter of acceptance will be contingent on panelist's statement of audio-visual and other needs (such as time preferences). If there are no AV requirements, the panelist should so state before proposal is accepted.
6. The program chair will organize accepted proposals into appropriate panels and give them descriptive names, making sure that concurrent panels do not share the same country, area, or time period. The local arrangements chair will provide to the program chair, at least six weeks prior to the meeting, information relevant to the printed program such as meeting rooms, time and place for receptions, banquets and other cultural events, and administrative meetings. The program chair will arrange such information appropriately in the program.
7. The program chair will prepare two forms--one to solicit pre-registration fees from all panelists (including optional fees for banquets, etc.), and one to solicit membership fees. The local arrangements chair will prepare lodging and travel information. Together with the tentative program, this will comprise the conference information packet, which will be provided to the secretary-treasurer in time to allow it to be sent to members at least one month in advance of the annual meeting. At this time the program chair will also provide the webmaster with a copy of the tentative program on diskette in MS Word format.
8. The program chair will produce a final, printed form of the program.
9. The local arrangements chair will receive preregistration forms and fees, for which adequate records will be kept. At the time of the meeting, a registration table will be set up to distribute name tags and conference materials to pre-registered attendees, as well as to accommodate late registration and the payment of membership dues.
10. The local arrangements chair will provide a final report on the meeting to the secretary-treasurer, including attendance statistics and a financial summary, by the end of the year.