Dear TRB Technical Activities Council, Chairs and Members of Technical Activities Division standing committees, and Chairs of Sections and Coordinating Councils,
It has been a while since my last email regarding the Annual Meeting. I have started this email several times only to find that something I was “certain” about changed. However, too much time has gone by. We have been making good progress
and I would like to keep you in the loop.
Committee Meetings
Committee, subcommittee, coordinating council, and executive board meetings will take place in the first two weeks of January. More than 400 meetings are scheduled. All of these meetings will be supported by TRB staff using our staff Zoom
accounts. We are putting together checklists and tips for both staff and chairs to ensure smooth operation of these meetings. We also have back up plans in place in the event that any staff person is unexpectedly unavailable, loses electricity or internet
connection, etc. National Academies IT staff have been very helpful in getting us set up and will also be available to provide technical assistance during the meetings.
Because of the virtual nature of the meeting, we expect to see attendance from many new people who do not normally have the opportunity to attend the in-person meeting. we are hearing from many of our year-round sponsors that more of their
staff will be able to attend. We hope that more younger professionals, students, and international colleagues will be able to participate as well. I mention this so that you keep it in mind as you plan your committee meetings. Try to avoid using TRB codes
and jargon (like committee codes) that new people will not understand. A great first step in making people feel welcome is not to make them feel lost! Within the constraints and challenges of a large Zoom meeting, try to think of some ways that new people
can be engaged. For example, ask newcomers to introduce themselves in the chat box, encourage questions in the Q&A box and assign a couple of committee meetings to monitor the questions. Leave time to address these questions or fold them into the meeting as
it progresses.
Thanks to the work of TRB’s IT staff, we have been able to include direct links to the Zoom committee meetings in the online interactive program. These links will only be accessible to registered Annual Meeting attendees so make sure you
and your committee friends are registered (there is a complimentary registration category this year for those who only attend the committee meetings and/or the exhibits). The Annual Meeting registration page is at
http://www.trb.org/AnnualMeeting/Registration.aspx.
Sessions
First, thank you for getting your session information in under conditions of uncertainty and extra constraints. From what I have seen so far, this is going to be another great program. Not surprisingly, there is a lot on COVID-19 impacts
and on equity issues in transportation. There is plenty in all the other areas we usually cover as well. A special thanks to all those who worked on paring down the number of workshops to what we could afford to support. We have retained data on all the unscheduled
workshops in our system, so if you still feel some of them are relevant next year it will be easy to resurrect them.
One of the silver linings of a virtual meeting is that we can have true plenary sessions. One will be the Deen Distinguished Lecture on Monday, January 25 at 5:30 pm ET/GMT-5. Mr. Dorval Carter, President of the Chicago Transit Authority,
is the Deen lecturer. The title of his presentation is “Our Work is Never Done: Examining Equity Impacts in Public Transportation.” After Mr. Carter speaks, he will engage in a discussion with former Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx; our TAC chair
Hyun-A Park will serve as moderator. The second plenary session will be the Chair’s Plenary Session on Wednesday, January 27 at 11:30 am ET/GMT-5. This session takes the place of the Chair’s Luncheon. The keynote speaker for this session is Dr. Marcia McNutt,
the president of the National Academy of Sciences—the first woman to serve in this role since NAS was founded in 1863.
Another feature (or bug, depending on your perspective) of this virtual meeting is that the session time limits are absolute. Our virtual platform conference vendor, Community Brands (CB) provides 90 minute sessions, not our usual 105 minutes,
and will end the sessions on time so that they can move on to the next session. (Our three-hour workshops are two 90-minute sessions). If you are monitoring a session you will want to make sure your speakers understand that they have to stick to their presentation
durations. You might also want to keep questions until the end of the session so that all speakers can speak.
Speaker Issues
We have experienced delays in getting speaker invitations finalized and sent out due to all the IT changes required to accommodate a virtual meeting and to establish the necessary methods for transferring data to CB. Official invitations
are expected to go out this week. I apologize for the 300 or so invitations that went out erroneously using last year’s invitation email. That was simply human error, pushing a “button” before it was ready.
In addition to the limit on session duration, there are two important changes in requirements for speakers this year. First, speakers must respond to their invitation to confirm that they will speak. We always ask them to do this but many
do not and we just trust that they will show up. However, this year their response includes language allowing us to broadcast their image and presentation as well as language related to copyright permissions. If speakers do not confirm their involvement and
agree to this language they will not be permitted to speak. Second, the majority of lectern session presentations and many workshop presentations will need to be pre-recorded, which must be done prior to the meeting—no working on powerpoints the night before
the session! These two requirements are beyond TRB’s control, being required by Academy lawyers in the first case and by CB in the second. We may need your assistance in following up with speakers to ensure that these requirements are met so we don’t lose
any of the great content planned for the meeting.
Virtual Platform
We are working closely with Community Brands to get the many aspects of the platform set up, tested, and populated with workshops, sessions, and exhibits. The TRB Annual Meeting is larger and more complex than many virtual meetings, so
there has been more back-and-forth, more clarifications and modifications, with CB than we had anticipated. In addition to getting the technical content organized and transferred, we’ve been able to obtain photos from the Convention Center and have asked CB
to replace their lobby and networking lounge images with these photos as a small way to maintain visual continuity with past and future Annual Meetings.
Program Tools
The delay in sending out speaker invitations led to a delay in posting the online interactive program, which should also take place this week. We have decided to use our usual online interactive program, in parallel with CB’s program and
search functions, for several reasons: The committee meetings will not be on CB’s platform so we have to put them in our own system. The search functionality on our system is more inclusive than CB’s. Using our system allows the program to persist after the
meeting in an archived version, which will be accessible from our Annual Meeting webpage.
We have also decided to use our usual mobile app again this year because so many attendees have told us how much they depend on it. This will provide some continuity and familiarity for those accustomed to using this tool. As in the past,
you will be able to create a personal program schedule in either the online interactive program or the mobile app and sync your personal program between the two (unfortunately, this personal program will not sync with CB).
Resources
We are currently developing resources for moderators, speakers, and attendees to help them navigate the virtual platform and make the most of the 2021 Annual Meeting. As these resources are ready they will be made available on the Annual
Meeting webpage. We are also developing a welcome video, in place of the usual Sunday Welcome Session, that will be available on our Annual Meeting webpage prior to the committee meetings and throughout the meeting.
In the virtual Exhibit Hall TRB will have a number of virtual exhibit booths, including one for the Technical Activities Division. This booth will be a place for attendees to learn more about committees, specialty conferences, and other
TAD activities. The current thought is that we will have a serious of “open houses,” possibly at the Group and Section level, to take the place of the committee tables that we use during the Sunday welcome session to discuss committee involvement with new
attendees. These open houses would be in the form of Zoom meetings; the schedule of open houses and Zoom links would be available in the TAD exhibit booth. Stay tuned for more information about this opportunity to attract new Friends and potential future committee
members.
Registration, Exhibits, and Patrons
Before
signing off, a reminder that early bird registration fees expire November 30, so encourage people to register soon at
http://www.trb.org/AnnualMeeting/Registration.aspx.
If
your organization is interested in exhibiting at the Annual Meeting or being an Annual Meeting patron, the rates this year are lower than usual so this could be a great opportunity to both support TRB and advertise your own organizations’ work. Information
about the Exhibitor and Patron packages can be found at https://events.jspargo.com/trb21/public/enter.aspx.
I
hope you all have a happy and healthy holiday season!
Ann
Ann M. Brach, Ph.D., P.E.
Director, Technical Activities
Transportation Research Board
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
TRB 100th Annual Meeting
January 5-8, 11-15, 21-22, and 25-29, 2021
Washington, DC
