As you can probably start to see, even with this website, we are going to try to incorporate as many new techniques as possible into this event. This website is really a social networking community site that hopefully helps to foster discussion around the topics discussed at the symposium. In upcoming weeks, the track chairs will start to utilize the forums on this site to interact with the Sloan-C community and beyond to address the issues that are most relevant to your interests and needs.
With this website, this event can become an extension of the community and what your needs are, rather than just an informational site about the symposium. In addition, it can provide a way for the broader community to benefit from the activities surrounding the face-to-face (f2f) event, even if you aren't able to attend in person.
Your feedback is greatly appreciated on these concepts, as it is the Sloan-C community that can help shape and mold this event and this website into a valuable resource for all that visit. In general, these are some of the other areas that are in the works for the upcoming months:
Virtual Symposium - Starting in January, Sloan-C will hold online workshops that are aligned with the track topics, but accessible to a much broader group that may not be able to make it to the face-to-face event in May. There will be separate fees for the virtual symposium, and it isn't meant to displace the kind of interaction you can get at a f2f event, but for many, this will be a great alternative with a great deal of learning opportunities across the spectrum of the symposium topics. The virtual symposium will culminate with the onground/f2f event on May 7-9 and involve select live streaming presentations from Carefree, AZ.
Basic Training Bootcamp - Unfortunately, at most live events, it is difficult to actually take the technologies for a test drive. It is typically a lot of discussion with very little doing! The Basic Training Bootcamp is planned to be a part of the Virtual Symposium and will provide a way to get a very hands-on experience with many of the technologies discussed at the f2f event.
We'll post more as the plans come together, but this is just a starting point. Please let us know if you have any other ideas!
