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

Pep to Chris 12 May 2005:

We have started to plan the organization of the
2006 pan-ALMA meeting. I would like to
contact the members of the SOC asap. In your e-mail
you said that two names were still TBD (1 from
Japan and 1 from North America). Could you, please,
tell me if the ASAC has already decided in this context ?
If not, could you please propose two names for approval
at the next ASAC telecon ?

The symposium is finally scheduled for Nov 13-16, 2006.

Rafael and me we have prepared a preliminary activity
calendar and we plan to send the 1st announcement by
Sept 15, 2005. The 2nd annoucement and the call for
contributing taks will be sent by January 2006.

The LOC composition is the following:

J. Martin-Pintado CSIC co-chairman
Pere Planesas     OAN  co-chairman
R. Bachiller      OAN
J. Cernicharo     CSIC
F. Colomer        OAN
J.R. Pardo        CSIC
P. de Vicente     OAN
M. Agundez        CSIC
J. Gracia         OAN
I. Jimenez        CSIC