Setting up IT and Office Services at Astronomical Conferences Joe Harrington, Cornell University jh@oobleck.astro.cornell.edu ACM, 30 July 1999 Astronomers attending conferences expect ready access to the internet. I was detailed to provide an email facility at the 1999 Asteroids, Comets, Meteors (ACM) conference, but found little guidance on what and how much to provide. This report is thus intended to help future conference organizers provide an adequate facility on a minimal budget. Using ACM 99 as an example, it discusses the whys and hows, the services provided, how they were used, and how to do it better at future conferences. The discussion includes a budget, setup, hours of operation, specific demands of the astronomical and press communities, and problems to avoid. WHYS AND HOWS "Email rooms" began appearing at conferences in the early 1990s. Organizers might be tempted to think of email as a nice extra that a budget-wary conference could dispense with, but the strong expectation of attendees is that they will have internet access with minimal fuss or wait. Conferences failing to offer it may find participants asking for access to the organizers' personal workstations. During ACM 99, we had many people register for the DPS conference, one of whose deadlines fell during the week of our conference. If we hadn't had an email room, those participants would have been scrambling for access elsewhere in order to meet the deadline. We also had a Congressional NASA budget crisis that many participants heard about through email and responded to through our office services. A good email room will cost up to several thousand dollars, depending on the size of the conference and the cost of renting hardware. This is a sizeable sum, on par with refreshments and other standard services. However, keep in mind that most conference attendees cannot provide their own email access, particularly if they don't own a laptop. Conference attendees can go to the corner donut shop and buy their own refreshments, and some conferences have handled refreshments by bringing in vendors rather than supplying food themselves. Most of the activity we observed in the ACM 99 email room was astronomical in nature and so in keeping with the goals of the conference. In addition to work-related email, participants edited and printed out papers to work on with their collaborators at the conference, showed their work to each other on their web sites, kept up on the breaking budget story, and in more than one case even downloaded and printed their forgotten talk visuals. So, we considered providing a good email room to be a higher priority than the accepted necessity of refreshments. Of course, a good conference will have both in ample supply. WHAT WE PROVIDED The 1999 ACM conference had 425 registered attendees. We provided two rooms with information technology (IT) and office services: an email room for participants and a press room for the media. We scoped the email room based on what we saw at the 1998 DPS conference, but scaled for ACM's smaller attendance. We rented 12 Windows laptop machines with ethernet access and a networked printer. A few years ago, we would have been more concerned with machine type, but the universal interface of web browsing made that a moot issue for most users. Each laptop had Netscape, Eudora, Telnet, and FTP programs. We also provided a photocopier and 13 ethernet drops for participants' own laptops. The drops took two cascaded 8-port hubs and fifteen 30' (9-meter) UTP ethernet cables. The room was 16x50 feet (5x15 meters), with one wall of windows and one set of double doors. We put a laptop and an empty ethernet cable on each 6'x2.5' table, along with 2 chairs per table. We expected that most of our laptop drops would not be in use at any given time, so this layout put some space between the more-active laptop seats. The room was open from 8am to 6:30pm each day, which was 30 minutes before the first session and after the last session each day. The room was locked after hours. We had one undergraduate staffer in the room at all times, and I made drop-in visits several times a day to check on things. The staffer had a phone and I had a cellular phone in case of emergencies and unanswerable questions, though this wasn't much used. The hotel set up tables, chairs, and our rented machines before we arrived. We set up the gear for participant machines, the photocopier, and extra power. This took about an hour on the first day of the conference. We had a separate subnet for all our machines to protect the hotel network from any trouble on our net. The hotel asked for this and split the cost with us. We had 229 IP addresses to give out to participants for their personal laptops, and instruction sheets for PC, Mac, and Linux users for setting the address. The 10 mbps network was entirely adequate. In fact, the rented laptops were linked by radio ethernet at only 1 mbps, and nobody seemed to notice. We had 11 registered press attendees. The press room had a fax machine, 3 phone lines (including the fax), 7 ethernet drops, and 2 laptop computers, one PC like those in the email room, and one Mac. The drops took one 8-port hub and eight 30' (9-meter) UTP ethernet cables. There was also a table with press releases and open registration. The room was staffed occasionally by a university press officer. After hours we moved the fax machine to the email room and locked it. USE AND USER DEMANDS We recorded email room use every 15-45 minutes and the use exceeded our expectations. Many machines were in use immediately when we opened the doors on the first day. That day we had a maximum of 11 rental laptops and three personal laptops in use. However, we made an error in underadvertising the location of the email room. We made announcements and put up maps, and by the second day we had 12 machines in use solidly from 9:30 am - 1:30 pm, and often had full use for much of the afternoon. Use peaked during the breaks and in particular sessions that did not appeal to the bulk of the attendees. There was no dip during lunch, and the only time the room was well below half utilized was during the opening hour of the banquet, whose ticket was included in the admission price. Although at times as many as 5 people were waiting for a machine, the turnover was high enough that waiting times were rarely more than a few minutes. We closed the room during evening poster sessions so that participants would see the posters. The first two days were hectic with small problems, and a second staffer would have been busy most of both days answering questions and fixing broken setups. By the third day, questions had calmed down. We wrote up a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list and taped it to the wall. People actually read it while waiting, and we saw a lot of people following its instructions without asking us questions. On the fourth and fifth days the undergraduate staffer opened and closed the room and handled all operations without assistance. Because Windows required rebooting on numerous occasions during the conference, it was important for the staffer to know how to do basic setup tasks, and to have the password for the machines. We advertized the existence of ethernet drops for participant laptops in our conference announcement mailings. Having these drops reduced the number of laptops we needed to rent by several, while pleasing the users who brought their own machines. Participants registered 15 personal laptops, each of which received an IP address for the duration of the conference. Of these, 9 ran Windows and 6 ran Linux. We were very surprised that nobody brought a Mac. Nobody requested an ethernet connection other than UTP. We wrote the IP number on an instruction sheet for that particular type of computer, and handed the sheet to the user. We recorded the machine type and the user's name and affiliation on a log sheet. In general, participants with their own computers were knowledgeable in how to set them up, and our instructions were good enough for the remainder. An important part of our instructions was a set of blanks where the user recorded all the machine's original settings. We had an extra instruction sheet for Linux users who wanted to set up a separate system profile for the ACM net, preserving the information for their home net in their original system profile. None of the participants who brought a laptop asked for help of any kind, except for instructions on how to access the printer. At most 5, and usually only 2 or 3, of the participant laptops were in use at any given time, so we removed a few tables with rental laptops on them and moved those machines to seats with drops for participant laptops. This opened the space somewhat. The copier in the email room was heavily used, and we should have placed it on its own table, away from nearby computers, so those users would not be bothered by people working the copier. Often there were several copier users at a time. Between the copier and printer, we printed about 1300 sheets of paper and 80 transparencies. We provided our own transparencies for the copier and printer to eliminate the chance that one would melt in the machines. Our rented laptops had Netscape (web browser), Eudora (Post Office Protocol email client), Telnet (remote login), and FTP (file transfer protocol client) programs installed. All were accessed through Netscape. Users asked for only two packages in addition, with several requests for each: the Ghostscript (PostScript previewer) plugin for Netscape and SSH (encrypted remote login). We had one incident of a user downloading and installing Ghostscript without our permission, though he did it correctly. In retrospect, we should have supplied both these programs. There are many PostScript documents on the web in astronomy, and we saw many people going to a DOS prompt and manually dumping their downloaded PostScript files to the printer device, following the instructions on our FAQ. The SSH users were in particular trouble because they came from sites where non-SSH logins are disallowed. Granted this is a poor security policy (they should use S/Key, which is secure and does not require more than Telnet on the client end), but we had some pretty unhappy people. Postscript and network access on the printer were important because many people wanted to print PostScript documents and participant laptops were simplest to configure to print directly over the network. A few users could not reach their home sites from our machines because we had not registered them with the Domain Name Service, and their sites blocked unregistered machines as a security risk. Again, this may be poor security policy (a hacker knows how to spoof the originating IP address and so can appear to come from anywhere), but we had some unhappy users. We registered our entire subnet in the middle of the week. We made big errors on press room setup, though mostly on the safe side. Not one of the 11 press used an ethernet drop. All wanted a phone line. Our three phone lines were barely adequate. The few reporters who brought machines used modems to connect to their offices. Being a university with an internal phone system, it was important to enable them to dial outside, including long-distance calls. The conference paid the expense of these calls simply because it is difficult to use a credit card with a modem or fax dialer. It was important to tape the dial-out instructions to each telephone. Press members said a ratio of 3-4 press members per phone line was adequate, though of course they would have liked more lines than that. We reserved one line for incoming calls and one for incoming faxes, so our remaining line was squeezed by modem use much of the time. We made one strategic planning error in putting two press conferences in immediate sequence. Once the first ended, the entire press corps ran to file a story, leaving no press in the room for the second conference. That conference was rescheduled for a later time. A bird in the hand is apparently worth more than two in the bush, if you're a reporter. The fax machine received more faxes than it sent, and got more use by participants than by the press, so in retrospect it should have gone in the email room. COSTS We paid $15/day/laptop and $25/day/printer for a total rental cost of $1025. These machines were rented internally to the university and thus the rates were much lower than commercial rates. We also paid about half the $400 fee to put in a new subnet and run it for the duration of the conference. We paid two undergraduates for their time preparing for the conference (making ethernet cables, signs, handouts, buying the fax machine, etc.) and for staffing it. We also bought three reams of paper and one box of 100 transparencies, and paid for long-distance calls made by the press and by fax users (we did not advertise this!). Our department paid for the fax machine, cable parts, and three 8-port hubs and took possession of them after the conference. We borrowed power strips and extension cords. LESSONS 1. 12 machines for 425 people was not enough, though the line was never more than 5 people and the wait never more than 5 minutes. 2. 15 of 425 people brought laptops and at most 5 were in use at a time. 60% of these were PCs and 40% were Linux machines. There were no Macs. 3. Advertise the location of the room well. 4. Double-staff the first day. Single-staff at all other times. 5. Software to provide: web browser, PostScript printing, POP email client, SSH (called F-Secure commercially), telnet, ftp, word processing. 6. Register all IP addresses with DNS. 7. The copier was heavily used and should have been at least 2 meters from the nearest machine. 8. The fax was used more by participants than the press and belonged in a room accessible to participants. 9. In addition to incoming voice and fax phone lines, have one phone line per three reporters. 10. The press doesn't, in general, use ethernet. 11. FAQ lists posted on the wall do get read! DOING IT Some of the arrangements for IT services can take time to complete, so it is a good idea to start early. First, decide what services you will supply. How many stations with computers, how many with empty ethernet drops? What other gear? Price the gear, put together a budget, and get it approved by the conference. Consider supplying at least one machine per 35 participants, and expect one out of 25 to bring their own. We expect the number of laptops to increase in future years as more people get them. We encourage conferences to provide excess laptop drops because they are almost free to provide, reduce user load on the rented gear, and make users much happier because they are in environments they understand. It is important to advertise the service in advance of the conference. Second, determine the necessary characteristics of the space. Figure 3' (1 meter) of table space per machine or empty drop. Alternating installed machines and empty drops is a good idea because often two people look at one screen at a time, and laptop drops are often empty, if enough are provided. This avoids the need for extra chairs in the room. Chairs take 2'x2' (60cm x 60cm), and require at least an additional 2' (60 cm) behind them for people walking by. Consider power and egress needs, in addition to the presence of ethernet and telephone lines. Third, choose rooms for the facilities based on the physical needs. Draw up a scale seating diagram and make copies with ethernet and power wiring drawn in. Use these diagrams to make lists of cable lengths, hubs/switches, extension cords, power strips, and furniture needed. Fourth, arrange with the conference site for ethernet access, including enough assignable addresses. Also clear your wiring plan with them, as there is a maximum to the number of cascaded hubs that will work and the site may already have hubs between you and the router. Also give them your furniture diagram so they can set up before the conference. Fifth, secure written agreements with all parties supplying gear or services outlining exactly what will be supplied, when, and at what cost. If you are renting gear, establish procedures to follow in the event something is broken or stolen. We strongly recommend theft-prevention devices, particularly for laptops! Also agree upon where the liability lies if something is lost or stolen. Sixth, make any cables or handouts you will need. Plan on having everything in hand at least a week before the conference so that you can make emergency purchases if needed and still have things ready in time. Train your staff. Go to the site in the week before the conference and test the ethernet connections and phone jacks. Seventh, set up and inventory the gear. This step takes 2-3 hours. Tape down any cables that run on the floor so nobody trips. Eighth, open the room! It would be useful to track usage unintrusively (head counts done by staff, not sign-up sheets). Report them to the place where you got this sheet. Ninth, when you break down the room at the end of the conference, check off each item in turn to be sure you have everything. This can take 2-3 hours, including packing it all up. Tenth, return anything you rented or borrowed. CONCLUSION We expect that user demands will change as technology evolves and users become ever more sophisticated. Copies of our handouts are available at the same place you got this document, or from the author. Be sure to modify them for your own site, as they have our IP addresses and URL on them! Please share your experiences with the source of this document so that it can be kept current. We wish you a smooth-running conference!