Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 18:29:08 +0100

Dear all

The Spanish National ALMA Committee met last Friday. We were discussing 
about many aspects of the ALMA science meeting. 
Concerning the venue, it was decided that it will be held at the 
campus of the CSIC in the very center of Madrid (the CSIC is the Spanish
equivalent of the French CNRS, and it belongs to the "Ministerio de 
Educacion y Ciencia" -MEC-). We will have a conference room with
a capacity for 300 persons. Additionally, we could also have several 
seminar rooms (80-90 persons), if needed, and 
several meeting rooms (15-20 persons) for possible meetings of the SOC, 
ESAC, ASAC, and any other teams. All these conference
and meeting rooms are offered by the CSIC for free. However, in
order to make reservations for all these rooms we need to know
as soon as possible:
 - how many of these rooms are really required
 - the precise dates of the meeting.

With regard to the funding of the meeting, the situation is the following:
OAN :  12000 Euros (confirmed)
CSIC:   4000-6000 Euros (confirmed. In addition to the rooms)
MEC:   12000 Euros (confirmed)
RadioNet and/or ESO : 8000 Euros (very probable) -OAN is member of RadioNet-

If the registration fee is 120 Euros and we expect 150 participants we
could add around 18000 Euros. The total expected budget could be
around 54-56 KEuros which could allow to cover the conference diner,
coffee breaks, poster panels, travel support for invited speakers and
for students, and eddition of the proceedings.
 
It could be nice to have ESAC and/or ASAC meetings as the traveling 
expenses of their members could be taken over by ESO and the ALMA 
project. 

Best regards
Pepe Cernicharo