The basic duties of the Seminar Serf are:

(1) To keep the website up to date about who is coming and what
they are talking about.

You'll get periodic emails from Pat or Lev about upcoming visitors and when they're going to give their talks. The two usual talk windows are:

Thursdays at 2:10pm in MP1318A
Mondays at 3:10pm in MP408.

During job-talks-time, there'll often be several through the week, usually at 2pm in 1318A.

To keep the website updated, one goes tohttp://admin.cita.utoronto.ca/ and logs in as `office'. (You can get the password from Candace).

When you've logged in, go to the `Events' folder, and then the appropriate year's folder, and to create a listing for a new seminar, at the bottom of the main column of the page under `Create here' select `Event'.

Then input the date/time of the talk, the person's name (with their affiliation in parenthesis), and, if you have it, the title and abstract. You almost certainly won't have this information right away; just fill in `TBA' as the event title.Then `Send for Publishing' and logout, and some time later it will eventually pop up on the CITA page.

Eventually you'll get an email actually containing a title and abstract, and you'll have to go back to the Events section and find out which of the `TBA' talks is the right one, and fill in the new information. (If you go to the public CITA events page, you'll see that the URLs for the TBA talks are, eg, ...tba_3 ; that helps finding the right one.) Again, `Send for Publishing' and logout.

(2) To announce the talks. This is done in two stages:

Two work days before the talk, put up posters for the talk. The posters go up on the top 3 floors (12/13/14) of MP (to get CITA and some astro people), on the 9th floor (where some CITA-in-exile people are) and the bottom 4 (B/1/2/3) floors (so everyone in the building seems them).

The same day, send an email announcing the talk to the following list of people:
beers@kepler.pa.msu.edu, bob.holdom@utoronto.ca, \
bwilson@physics.utoronto.ca, citamail@cita.utoronto.ca, \
cita_seminars@coho.physics.mcmaster.ca, citavisitors@cita.utoronto.ca, \
gregerse@physics.mcmaster.ca, groth@utias.utoronto.ca, \
jbayer@physics.utoronto.ca, jkhoury@perimeterinstitute.ca, kiminn@yorku.ca, \
lepischk@physics.mcmaster.ca, lsmolin@perimeterinstitute.ca, \
maildis@astro.utoronto.ca, \
mjhudson@uwaterloo.ca, \
mmenzing@chem.utoronto.ca, moffat@physics.utoronto.ca, \ pgs@physics.mcmaster.ca, \
poisson@physics.uoguelph.ca, Ralph Pudritz , \
rmyers@perimeterinstitute.ca, \
smorris@physics.utoronto.ca, \
tilley@physics.mcmaster.ca, vandalfs@physics.mcmaster.ca, \
wadsley@physserv.physics.mcmaster.ca, widrow@lola.phy.queensu.ca, \
colinm@physics.mcmaster.ca

The morning of the talk, send an email to the same list of people reminding them of the talk that day.

You can make your own LaTeX (or whatever) template for making posters. Jonathan Dursi has cobbled together a script that you can download here which should run under any linuxy box, where you can type

./make_all_from_url

and it will parse all the information and make:

.tex -- latex for a poster
.pdf -- pdf of same (hopefully)
.email -- an email to send out announcing the talk
.reminderemail -- an reminder email

those can then be used accordingly.The script isn't perfect, but is much less tedious than cutting and pasting stuff from the webpage multiple times. If there's any funny characters in the abstract, the poster often won't latex, and you'll have to edit the tex file re-latex the poster manually.

Note -- edit the script to make the mail from you, rather than from the last serf! There's a lot of bounced email from the out-of-date addresses on some of these lists (like citalocal, maildis@astro, etc.)

(3) On the day of the talk, you're responsible for making sure the
A/V stuff for the talk is good to go.

In 408, there isn't much to do except turn on the projector(*) and bring down the `CITA pointer' from the classroom or lounge (and back again). If for some reason the speaker doesn't want to use a strange twisty piece of fake wood to point with, we now have a laser pointer they can use. If the talk is in 1318A, you'll have to get the screen and the LCD projector (or, perhaps, the transparency projector) and drag them to the CITA lounge to set them up. They're located in the mail room, and are mainly in obvious places. There's no real trick to setting any of them up.

After the talk, of course, you have to take down the A/V stuff, and take down the posters you've put up.

We are collecting speakers talks and putting them online. This means your job isn't done after the talk is over! You will generally have to email the speaker a few times and get them to email you a ppt/pdf of their slides, or, better, -- if you get them while they're here -- there's a memory stick you can have them put the slides onto. Then make a pdf file and name it according to the speaker's name and when they gave the talk (eg Smith-Jan01-07.pdf), and copy the file to /cita/d/www/TALKS/. Then add the URL http://www.cita.utoronto.ca/TALKS/Smith-Jan01-07.pdf in the appropriate field in the talk webpage at http://admin.cita.utoronto.ca/.

(*) If the speaker needs internet access, there's CITA wireless available in 1318A. For wireless access in 408, the speaker needs to give them the mac address by filling out this form: http://www.physics.utoronto.ca/~pcs/forms/mac_request_form.php . It is supposed to be instantaneous-ish. The person to contact about it is Iulian Comanean at 6-0093 (416-946-0093) (if necessary - it seems like it isn't).