<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<chapter>
  <title>Vice President</title>

  <para>This chapter covers various useful notes for the CSC vice president,
  ranging from who to call for room bookings to how to promote your events.</para>

  <sect1>
    <title>Planning events</title>

    <para>So, you&#39;re the CSC Vice President and you want to (hopefully)
    have the CSC host some really cool events this term. This chapter should
    help you get started with that.</para>

    <para>For starters, the most important thing to remember is this:
    <emphasis>plan your events early!</emphasis>. I recommend about 2 to 3
    weeks in advance. This rough timeline should help:</para>

    <itemizedlist>
      <listitem>
        <para>2-3 weeks in advance: Get a title and abstract for the event
        from the speaker as well as a date and time.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>2 weeks in advance: Book the room and any necessary equipment
        (projectors etc). Make posters for the event. Make initial
        announcements on Usenet and possibly by e-mail.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>2 Days in advance: E-mail <email>credmond@uwaterloo.ca</email>
        to get the event into the Daily Bulletin. Include a short
        (one-paragraph) description.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>Day of the event: Try to be at the event, or find someone who
        will be to make sure things go smoothly. Remember to get the projector
        if necessary. If there are people in the room you booked, ask them to
        leave politely. Mention that you have the room booked. Get
        refreshments to the room as necessary. Introduce the speaker.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>After the event: Thank the speaker in front of the audience and
        applaud. Offer to take the speaker out for dinner. Clean up the room
        and return any loaned equipment. Write him or her a cheque for any
        expenses if necessary. For out-of-town speakers a small gift might be
        nice.</para>
      </listitem>
    </itemizedlist>

    <para>The rest of this chapter will outline various tips that should be
    useful when running events and suggest some events that you might want to
    run.</para>

    <sect2>
      <title>Getting ideas and speakers for events</title>

      <para>Obviously you will have to start your planning by coming up with
      an event. Here are some types of events you might want to hold:</para>

      <itemizedlist>
        <listitem>
          <para>Talks held by CSC members. Ask around, there are probably a
          few members who have interesting things to give talks on. In the
          past CSC members have given talks about programming languages they
          like, Operating Systems, research projects, etc.</para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>Talks held by Faculty: Simply ask your CS profs, or get other
          exec to ask their profs or interesting faculty. Approaching faculty
          in person might get you better results than e-mailing, but be sure
          to follow up with an e-mail so that you have something written to
          remind them.</para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>Out-of-town speakers. The <ulink
          url="http://www.acm.org/chapters/stu/">ACM student chapter website</ulink>
          has a section called &#34;Lectureship series&#34; where you can find
          information on getting an ACM Distinguished Lecturer. You can also
          simply approach interesting people (in Academia, Industry or the
          Free Software scene) by e-mail and ask them if they&#39;d like to
          come and give a talk (or a few talks). Don&#39;t be afraid to ask
          high-profile people, the worst you can get is a &#34;no.&#34; Be
          sure to have the treasurer budget money to pay for the guest
          speaker&#39;s expenses. If you can, try to pay for travel expenses
          (unless the speaker offers), but at the very least arrange for meals
          and accomodation as well as transport from the airport or bus/train
          station if necessary.</para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>Special events. In the past we&#39;ve had an event called
          &#34;Pints with Profs&#34; where we invited the CS faculty (<email>cs-faculty@cs.uwaterloo.ca</email>)
          and any interested CS students to come out to a pub. The Bomber is a
          convenient location but we&#39;ve found their catering to be
          expensive. Weaver&#39;s Arms (in WCRI) might be a good alternative.
          Be sure to budget this with Mathsoc, so you can pay for free food.
          Try to get both meat and vegetarian alternatives (e.g. Wings and
          Veggie Platters). Make sure you publicise this event very well, and
          don&#39;t hesitate to ask the profs to announce it in class (giving
          them overheads might be a good idea). This is definitely an event
          you should try to hold. If you can think of any other special
          events, go right ahead, be creative! Be sure to add them here.</para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>Tutorials. Usually we hold a few UNIX tutorials at the
          beginning of the term. These are quite popular and you can get
          Faculty (especiall the first and second-year CS profs) to announce
          them in class. Be sure to book a lab. If there are more than one or
          two other people in the lab, politely ask them to leave - in our
          experience, asking such groups to be quiet doesn&#39;t usually work
          very well. Aside from UNIX you could have tutorials for LaTeX, some
          programming language, some programming problem (e.g. &#34;Writing a
          raytracer&#34;) or anything you think would be useful for people to
          learn. </para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>Contests. Programming contests can be a lot of fun and will
          certainly raise interest in the club. Try to get nice prizes so that
          you can attract a large group of contestants. Be sure to have the
          rules and the environment set up early on. Game solving contests are
          a good idea (this can range from writing programs to play
          rock-paper-scissors to having programs compete at playing chess),
          demo programming contests can also be fun or you might go for
          something more useful. It&#39;s up to you - be creative!</para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>Anything else you can think of. Be imaginative and ask for
          suggestions. The ACM website also has some good suggestions for
          events. Don&#39;t limit yourself to computer-related events - a
          volleyball match against the Pure Math Club might be fun.</para>
        </listitem>
      </itemizedlist>
    </sect2>

    <sect2>
      <title>Announcing the event: Posters and Posts</title>

      <para>Once you have the abstract and the room booked you should get the
      word out. For starters you should send an announcement to the uw.csc
      newsgroup and possibly to the members by e-mail (try to reserve the
      latter for special events, although an update with upcoming events every
      now and then might be a good idea).</para>

      <para>You&#39;ll also want to make printed posters. Simon Law made a
      <filename>cscposter.cls</filename> file for LaTeX which can be used to
      generate nice-looking posters in letter format. Try to not have too much
      text on the posters so that they grab more attention. Getting posters
      out earlier rather than later is definitely beneficial. To actually
      distribute posters you should use several methods:</para>

      <itemizedlist>
        <listitem>
          <para>Put up the posters on the CSC boards. There are 3 boards: a
          small one right by the door of MC3036, a large one in the 3rd floor
          hallway of the MC and another large one on the second floor of the
          MC (directly below the third floor hallway).</para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>Give 6 posters to Mathsoc. Just drop by 6 posters in the
          Mathsoc office and they&#39;ll put them up around the MC and DC.</para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>Make use of the FEDS poster run. FEDS offers a (reasonably
          cheap) poster run where they will distribute many posters around
          campus. Check the <ulink
          url="http://www.feds.uwaterloo.ca/services/marketing.html">FEDS
          marketing website</ulink> for pricing and information on how to use
          it. While we aren&#39;t a FEDS club, we are part of MathSoc, so try
          to get the &#34;student society&#34; price. Also, make sure you
          budget for this from Mathsoc, you can probably get funds from them
          to use this.</para>
        </listitem>
      </itemizedlist>

      <para>There are other ways to get people to know about the event. If the
      event is relevant to classes, try to convince profs to announce it in
      class (giving them an overhead with the details is a good idea). Also,
      have the event announced in the Daily Bulletin (a daily update on the UW
      website about what&#39;s happening on campus). To do so, e-mail Chris
      Redmond (<email>credmond@uwaterloo.ca</email>).</para>

      <para>Word of mouth is another important channel. Tell others in the CSC
      (both executives and members) to tell their friends about events. Tell
      your own friends and classmates about events that they might find
      interesting. Word of mouth is often how events get most of their
      publicity.</para>

      <para>Lastly, you&#39;ll want to add the event to the website. Contact
      the CSC webmaster (or if there is none, the sysadmin) to have him or her
      do that for you, or find out how to do it yourself. This way others can
      check for events on the website, and you can also conveniently point
      people there if they ask, &#34;What events is the CSC offering this
      term?&#34;</para>
    </sect2>
  </sect1>

</chapter>