Incase you have seen this. Look for the program and speaker notices to come out this
week.
Ed Christopher
708-269-5237
Begin forwarded message:
From: TRBTechnicalActivitiesDivision
<TRBTechnicalActivitiesDivision(a)nas.edu>
Date: November 10, 2020 at 3:40:18 PM CST
Cc: TRBTechnicalActivitiesDivision <TRBTechnicalActivitiesDivision(a)nas.edu>
Subject: TRB Annual Meeting Update
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