HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005 Thomas Baron – CERN –

IT

(and more)
Indico: An Event
Management Software
 Outline
Thomas Baron – CERN –

Project history
Technical details
Conference management
Lecture/meeting management
IT

Planning/Archiving tool
Indico: future trends and related collaborative tools
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005
 Project History
Thomas Baron – CERN –

CDS Agenda usage at CERN

CDS Agenda:
5386
 Created in 1999 following a 5107

request by ATLAS 3519

number of agendas
 Stores timetable of events and 2492
related files 998
1359
 At CERN:used by various projects, 437

departments, experiments and

1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005(until
committees end Sep)
IT

 Available as open-source under the GNU GPL and installed in

several places worldwide:
IN2P3, NiKHEF, DESY (ILC), ICTP, Elettra Trieste…
 Is used to create headers of many web pages (CERN, ATLAS, CMS…)
 http://agenda.cern.ch
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005

 Hosts mainly seminars, meetings and small conferences

TOO LIMITED SCOPE

 Project History
Thomas Baron – CERN –

Indico (Integrated Digital Conference)

 European project: 2002-2004
 Partners:
 Italy: SISSA, University of Udine
 Holland: TNO TPD, University of Amsterdam
 CERN
 CDS Agenda served as basis for writing the user requirements of
Indico
 In production at CERN since 2004 (first time use: CHEP’2004)
IT

 Currently hosts >45 conferences

 Usage is growing fast
 Also available as open-source under the GNU GPL
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005

 http://indico.cern.ch
 Current migration of CDS Agenda events to Indico
 Technical Details
Thomas Baron – CERN –

main development platform: Python

runs on an Apache web application server using the Python module
(mod_python)
Uses the Zope Object Database (ZODB) for storing conferences metadata
 Object Oriented database implemented in Python
The submitted files and archives are directly stored on the server’s file
system
HTML 4.0
XML + XSLt for timetable generation
IT

Interfaces:
 Web, OAI (Open Archive Initiative) protocol for metadata harvesting
 Tested on Windows, linux
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005

InDiCo is distributed under the GNU General Public

License and is fully open source
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005 Thomas Baron – CERN –
IT

Software architecture
Technical Details
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005 Thomas Baron – CERN –
IT
Conference Management
 Conference Management
Thomas Baron – CERN –

A complex event…
IT
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005

human logical
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005 Thomas Baron – CERN –
IT

…with a lot of processes

Conference Management
 Conference Management
Thomas Baron – CERN –

Indico helps managing all these processes by providing:

 A customizable web portal for the conference
 Dedicated interfaces for all the actors of the
conference
 Fine-granularity protection setup
 Flexible delegation of responsibilities
 File storage at all levels
IT

 Various listings (contributions, authors, speakers,

registrants…) and communication means.
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005

 Export mechanisms (iCal, PDF, XML, Excel)

HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005 Thomas Baron – CERN –
IT
Conference Management
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005 Thomas Baron – CERN –
IT
Conference Management
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005 Thomas Baron – CERN –
IT
Meeting Management
 Meeting Management
Thomas Baron – CERN –

Less actors, less processes: smaller complexity

Same basis but simplified interfaces
IT
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005 Thomas Baron – CERN –
IT
Meeting Management
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005 Thomas Baron – CERN –
IT
Meeting Management
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005 Thomas Baron – CERN –
IT
Lecture Management
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005 Thomas Baron – CERN –
IT
Lecture Management
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005 Thomas Baron – CERN –
IT
Lecture Management
 Planning/Archiving Tool
Thomas Baron – CERN –

One server – Many events of various sizes

Hierarchical organisation: tree of categories to classify the events
IT
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005
 Planning/Archiving Tool
Thomas Baron – CERN –

Various handy temporal views:

IT
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005

overview calendar
 Planning/Archiving Tool
Thomas Baron – CERN –

Long-term archival of the events metadata and related

material
Browsing capability
Search engine: uses CDSware
IT

Export tools: creation of external web pages (ATLAS

home page, LHCb…)
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005
 Future Trends and Related Collaboration
Tools
Thomas Baron – CERN –

Planned developement:
 Still a huge task list (> 6000 hours)
 Interface improvement program (based on the feedback from
EGEE and new CERN users)
 Fulltext search
 Proceedings creation improvement
 Internationalization (in collaboration with IN2P3/EPFL)
A goal for CERN: Organise the event 100% from Indico (avoiding
searching for several tools)
IT

 Closer integration with other conferencing services: room

booking, resource booking, video-conferencing (VRVS, CERN
MCUs), audioconference, seminar recording…
 Does not mean implement everything in Indico BUT regroup all
useful tools in a unique and convenient location.
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005

Indico live usage:

 Collaborative features: instant messaging/chat and presence
 Webconferencing
 Future Trends and Related Collaboration
Tools
Thomas Baron – CERN –

Making Indico aware of its environment

 Automatic download of ppt files on local conference room computer
 Example of a successful integration: SMAC (Smart Multimedia Archive for
Conference)
In collaboration with EIF (Ecole d’Ingénieurs de Fribourg)
Fully automated system for recording lectures, creating web lectures (SMIL)
Local recording, centralised processing, several conference rooms can be
served
Start/Stop recording from Indico, then the web lecture is directly attached to
the Indico event.

controller
IT

request

smac
Central Server request Server
Indico ROOM 1
manager
t
jec

est
ob

qu
re

controller
am
tu

lecture

re
object
lec

e
Web

str

smac
eb
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005

ia
ed ROOM 2
im
ul t
M

controller
SMAC

user
smac
ROOM 3
 Future Trends and Related Collaboration
Tools
Thomas Baron – CERN –
IT
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005

Example of a SMAC web lecture

Thomas Baron – CERN –

QUESTIONS
IT

Project web page: http://cern.ch/indico

Production@CERN: http://indico.cern.ch
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005

Contact: mailto:indico-project@cern.ch