Call for StanCon 2025+

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We are looking for volunteers to organize the next StanCons for 2025 (and beyond!)

If you are interested in making a proposal (or even just discussing the possibility of making one), please consider reaching out to board@mc-stan.org.

To make a proposal, please submit this form (https://forms.gle/cV4znbJjZCeBVJHj8) by November 30th.

What is StanCon?

StanCon brings together members of the Stan Community for a multiday conference that includes contributed talks, keynotes, tutorials, and more.

We’ve had participants from a wide range of applied fields, researchers in statistics and machine learning, and software developers. We’ve also enjoyed a good balance between early career and senior scientists, members from academia and industry, as well as both experienced and beginner Stan users.

What did the past StanCon look like?

StanCon 2024 took place at Oxford University, UK. The event included 2 days of introductory and advanced tutorials, and 3 days of talks, divided into contributed talks of ~20 minutes, as well as longer 1 hour talks by 4 invited keynote speakers. Regular speakers and tutorial instructors were selected following a call for proposals, which was reviewed by a scientific committee. As always, we were incredibly excited about the diversity of proposals we received!!

The format is not strict and has varied between the years.

For this next StanCon, we would like to have a poster session. Posters give more participants the opportunity to present their work, and can help individuals get funding to attend the conference.

The number of participants has ranged from 100 to 300, depending on the year. For the past two conferences, it was around 125.

What are we looking for in an organizer?

StanCon is organized by a committee. The committee should include:

  • A local organizer, who represents an institution hosting the event.
  • A program chair, responsible for the content and scientific quality of the program.
  • A member who will act as a liaison with the Stan Governing Body and NumFocus, the non-profit which manages finances of the Stan project (In the past, this member has been a member of the Stan Governing Body, although this is not a requirement.)

A single person can fulfill more than one of the above roles, and more organizers can be involved, if helpful. Crucially, we ask that one member be designated as a lead organizer, who can delegate tasks to other committee members. When reviewing proposals, we value past experience organizing events.

What do we expect from future StanCons?

Any event organized under the umbrella of Stan must abide by the Stan Code of Conduct.

Location

There has been a diversity of locations and we intend to keep StanCon moving around, so that anyone interested has a chance to attend. The location should be accessible to a strong community of Stan users. At the same time, we want to avoid repeat locations and cater to regions of the world where the event has not been held yet.

Given StanCon attracts travellers from across the world, and to reduce costs and improve sustainability, we encourage places that are well-connected by flight routes and/or trains.

Accessibility

StanCon should be accessible to a broad number of individuals, including early career scientists and members from underrepresented groups in STEM. There are several ways to achieve this:

  • Affordable housing, such as on-campus dorms, is available close to the conference.
  • Scholarships are available to cover registration fees and, to an extent, travel costs. In the past, funding for such scholarships has come from the hosting institution, NumFOCUS (the open-source organization that supports Stan), and sponsors.
  • The conference is organized in a country which has reasonable visa rules and is LGBTQ+ friendly.
  • For those who cannot travel, e.g. for visa or health reasons, the content of the conference is available online, either by streaming or by the online release of material after the conference.
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I’ll emphasize the “2025 and beyond”! If people are interested in organizing StanCon 2026, indicate this in the tentative dates.

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Thanks for putting the call out Charles!

Did you see the feedback from @Bob_Carpenter (in a comment on your Stat Modeling blog post) about modifying the responsibilities of the organizers? I’m not an expert in conference organization, so I don’t know what the appropriate allocation of responsibilities is, but I just wanted to make sure the @SGB is aware of Bob’s feedback since it’s time sensitive if there’s a deadline.

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This is what Bob said, and I fully agree:

I talked to Charles about this ahead of time, but I don’t think it sunk in. The way a conference is normally organized, you have three different groups:

  1. institutional group (e.g., Stan Governing Body)
  2. program chair (responsible for program, accepting talks, rough schedule)
  3. local chair (responsible for venue, fine-grained schedule)

It’s unusual to ask the same group that’s doing the local organization to also be responsible for being program chair. I mentioned that to Charles, but we still get this question in the form:

StanCon is organized by a committee. Provide at least the names of (i) a local organizer, (ii) a program chair, and (iii) an organizer who can act as a liaison with the Stan Governing Body and NumFocus.

This is also typically not the job of the local organizers:

StanCon brings together both veteran Stan users and new users. How would the proposed location attract veterans and new users?

I’m also not sure the local organizers are the ones to put in charge of deciding what kind of online content is produced, as seen in this question:

Please describe what type of online content you intend to provide (streaming, recording, etc.)

I’m writing this now not to complain but because it’s not too late to change what we’re asking of local organizers.

We need a StanCon committee, and this should be a standing committee responsible for the programs of future StanCons. As an SGB member, I propose that the SGB find 5 - 9 people willing to help out here - and all volunteers welcome!

OK, maybe not something this big and complicated - we need a program chair or a few co-chairs to manage the program - and not ask the local organizers to take this on.

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