Organization

General Chairs

Alex Koufos, Stanford University
Keith Beattie, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

We are looking for volunteers for the organizing committee.

We see this as a chance to make it a community-driven event where community members can build the program. We have several chair positions available, and we aim to have a chair and a co-chair for each role. We would also like to encourage people who do not have experience in organizing conferences to apply for a position, and we will pair them with a more experienced chair. It is an opportunity for you to build and demonstrate leadership skills and have deep involvement in community engagement. Please take under consideration that it is a commitment of about a year with regular meetings starting around January 2026, and additionally the actual tasks for the conference dependent on your role.

As a chair or co-chair, you’ll have the ability to help steer the direction of your piece of the conference. This might mean building a small sub-team of volunteers or making decisions about the implementation, format, and structure of elements of the conference.

We will select chairs for each role by selecting at least one experienced person for each role. Each chair will then be paired up with someone who has less experience, if possible, as a co-chair. You may note your preferences and we try to assign people to their preferred roles. If we have more applications than roles we can fill in the first step, there will be more opportunities for roles after the committee decides about the format of the conference. Session chairs are always needed at the conference, for example.

Interested in volunteering?

Please fill out this form

Roles

Technical Chairs

In this role you are responsible for the implementation of the overall technical program with creating an EasyChair instance for submissions, for assigning reviewers to the submissions, creating a schedule and co-defining the format of the conference. For example, whether there will be a poster session, what a submission should look like.

Communications Chairs

In this role you take care of the extensive communication requirements around the conference with sending emails to potential participants, sponsors, email lists, tweeting etc. May also include updating the web page.

Sponsorship Chairs

In this role you create a sponsor prospectus and contact sponsors.

Logistics Chairs

In this role you are responsible for logistics relating to local arrangements, travel information, hotel blocks, catering, etc. Being local to the conference is not required but would be a plus.

Student Program Chairs

In this role you apply for student funding and organize a mentor program or similar for the conference.

Community Engagement Chairs

In this role you create forms and text for emails for the conference with inclusive language and look at possibilities to make the conference as inclusive as possible.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions via email usrse26-conference@us-rse.org or Slack.

Contact

Contact the organizers: usrse26-conference@us-rse.org