Minutes of the CALICE-UK Steering Board Phone Meeting, 05/05/06
===============================================================
Present: Dave Bailey, Paul Dauncey, Mike Green, Mark Thomson, Renato
 Turchetta, Mike Tyndel, David Ward, John Wilson, Matthew Wing

Minutes: Paul


1) Previous meeting at Cambridge 08/09/05: No corrections. The status of
 various items not covered later are as follows:
 o We did not get a UK speaker for the DESY PRC report last Nov; this
   was given by Felix Sefkow.
 o The impact of running with mixed beams at CERN has not been studied.
   Paul reported that at a meeting at CERN yesterday, it was stated that
   the Cherenkov threshold detector may not be available for the first
   ("ECAL-only") CERN run period. (During the meeting, Jean-Claude
   sent out an email to the Steering Board stating he thought we should
   not run in this period without a Cherenkov; see below.)
 o Mark and Nigel will continue to communicate with LCFI to encourage
   UK links with all three detector concepts. Mark mentioned that Steve
   Worm is writing some of the vertex detector sections of the SiD
   report. Dave is going to SLAC after Montreal and will follow up on
   SiD contacts; it is important that CALICE is not seen as purely a
   LDC collaboration. Dave suggested that we should invite LCFI people
   to our UK general meetings to encourage collaboration and maybe even
   ask them to give a brief status report; this was thought a good idea.
 o Edinburgh have decided to join LCFI, in part because of the
   involvement with Glasgow.
 o The various WPs now have their own web pages.
 o RHUL are now officially members of CALICE.
 o We do not yet have a person who will take responsibility for
   organising the CALICE-UK general meetings; it was thought a more
   junior person would be appropriate. Matthew had previously suggested
   Chris Targett-Adams; Matthew will ask him if he is prepared to do
   this. There were no other suggestions for candidates, so if Chris
   agrees, he should start straight away.
 o Budget project codes have been set up at RAL.
 o All RAs from the first round are now in post.


2) Reponse to the Oversight Committee: The main issue raised by the
 OsC is the position of Project Manager. At the OsC meeting, we were
 told we needed to report on this within six weeks; however, the minutes
 from PPARC state we should report on this in the documentation for the
 next meeting, which is on Fri 29 Sep.

 It was accepted that we will have to have a person in a position
 which could be called Project Manager (PM). The discussion was mainly
 on the degree to which such a person would have to have a detailed
 understanding of every WP. Attending every WP meeting could be two or
 three days work a week, which would be excessive. It was decided that
 this task should take on average no more than one day each week. The
 PM should hold meetings dedicated to reviewing the status of the WPs
 every three months; this gives two such meetings between each OsC
 meeting. It might be that between these three-monthly meetings, the
 PM could attend a few of the regular WP meetings. The PM would have
 to have an overview of the finances and so would act in part as a
 Budget Holder.

 The initial setting up of this post, with the first round of OsC
 financial spreadsheets, GANNT charts and risk registers will be
 significant effort. However, iterations for subsequent OsC meetings
 should require much less work. Paul will help with this, particularly
 for the first round. Dave has some experience with Project, required
 by PPARC for the GANNT charts, so he also volunteered to help. Paul
 has been sent the templates for the financial and GANNT documents
 and the risk register format is unchanged, so this work can start
 at any time.

 Mike Green had previously said he would be prepared to do this and
 agreed if it can be kept to the one day a week level. There was general
 approval of him taking this on and so unless any other candidates
 contact Paul in the near future, then Mike will do this; many thanks
 to him.

 ACTION: Paul and Mike, with help from Dave, to start preparing the OsC
 documentation in time for the next UK Steering Board meeting. Mike to
 organise the first WP status meeting for around a month from now.


3) Steering Board, Technical Board and Speakers Bureau reports: Paul
 reported that there had been little activity in the Steering Board.
 The last meeting was in Oct. Since that time, there had been email
 agreements to formally accept Annecy (to work on endcap design; they
 have strong SiD connections) and Lyon (to work on DHCAL readout).
 A letter was also approved to be sent to Pier Oddone, the FNAL
 director, restating our intention to come to FNAL in 2007. The next
 meeting will be during the Montreal meeting next week. Paul cannot
 attend; Dave will be there and so should represent the UK.

 ACTION: Paul to email Jose (the Steering Board chair) to inform him
 that Dave will attend as the UK representative.

 Paul reported the Technical Board will hold its next review at DESY,
 in the afternoon of Thu 15 June and continuing all day on Fri 16 Jun.
 The last review was at DESY last Oct. Between reviews, the Technical
 Board meeting every two to three weeks to discuss the status of the
 detectors and administration for the CERN and FNAL beam tests although
 the discussion tends to be quite US-centric.

 David reported that he has raised various items concerning the Speakers
 Bureau for discussion at the Steering Board in Montreal. He gets very
 few replies to requests for volunteers for talks. From the UK, only
 Mike Green is likely to go to the Moscow conference this year; he would
 be willing to give a CALICE status report. For the future, David
 proposes to ask the PIs for name of deserving people and then approach
 them directly, asking if they would be able to talk at specific
 conferences. The hope is that this type of personal request will be
 more encouraging for the younger members. The UK PIs should of course
 ensure they reply when this request is sent round to get a good
 representation of the UK in conference presentations. David also raised
 the issue of vetting results before they are made public. This will be
 essential but at present, no mechanism exists. This should be raised
 (by Dave) at the Steering Board next week.

 ACTION: UK PIs to reply promptly to David's request. Dave to raise
 this at the upcoming Montreal Steering Board meeting.


4) DESY electron ECAL run: This is nominally three weeks from May 15 to
 Jun 2, although there is some ambiguity as the shift schedule only runs
 for two weeks. Following this, the AHCAL will use the beam for
 calibration of their modules. For the electron run, there will probably
 be two people on shift and so six shifters will be required at DESY at
 any time. Of these, a reasonable UK number would be two or three. Of
 the 30k travel budget for beam tests this year, around 10k could be
 used for DESY and the rest reserved for CERN. With 6-9 person-weeks of
 shifts and assuming that each trip of a week would be ~600 pounds, this
 would cost around 5k maximum. Hence, we should be very comfortable for
 travel and people should be encouraged to sign up for shifts whenever
 possible. Note, the end of this period overlaps with the World Cup so
 flights and accomodation may be hard to get, so book early.


5) CERN run: Mary Elizabeth has started looking for accomodation for
 this period. People thought an apartment would be best although a
 hotel residence would be reasonable if nothing else is available.
 Mary Elizabeth has also said all the CERN vans are booked for this
 period, so Paul will follow up on other options (such as going
 outside the CERN pool) but insurance and named drivers may be issues.

 It seems that we will definitely need some account at CERN to get
 even minor items. Mary Elizabeth suggested setting up an account
 linked to our RAL budgets, so she then does the administration. An
 letter explaining what information CERN require has been put on the
 usual web page. Experience of the CERN stores system was very good.

 ACTION: Paul to set up a CERN account and pursue the other items.

 During the meeting, Jean-Claude Brient distributed an email to the
 Steering Board stating that unless a Cherenkov is available for 
 electron id during the first CERN run period, we should not take data.
 This would obviously be a major disruption to the plans and this
 needs to be settled asap. It will be discussed in the Steering Board
 meeting at Montreal.


6) WP status reports. WPs 1 to 4 gave status reports (available on the
 usual web page). Nigel was at SLAC and so could not give a report for
 WP5. Some issues raised were:
 o WP1: The tracking chambers used at CERN will probably be quite
   different to those at DESY and will require a new offline checking
   and calibration procedure. Currently, Fabrizio Salvatore at RHUL has
   been responsible for the tracking and Mike Green will check if he
   will be willing to continue this task for the CERN data.
   Currently we do not produce data and MC in the same format. The
   missing link, the post-GEANT4 digitisation step, is stalled as there
   is no agreement on how it should be done. This is getting urgent
   and David hopes there will be some resolution of this at Montreal,
   despite several of the people involved not being able to attend.
 o WP2: For Task 2.1, the use of the newer ASIC design in the CERN
   test beam this year is looking less likely. The Orsay meeting decided
   the priority had to be completing the ECAL and the new chips would
   not be mounted onto PCBs with usable wafers until enough standard
   PCBs had been made. As there are not yet enough wafers to do complete
   even the 2/3 ECAL, it is likely new ASIC tests will be deferred until
   next year.
   In Task 2.3, the engineer due to work on the new Xilinx test board
   is Marc Kelly, who is also responsible for upgrading the current
   readout firmware to 2000 events. Dave thought Marc had hit major
   problems with this in the last week and so it would require a
   significant amount of his effort to complete. It was agreed that
   the current firmware should take priority over the new Xilinx board
   work.
   Matthew proposes to use the EUDET money on the three posts listed at
   the end of his talk; this will use up all the effort money. The
   network expert is the post which had to be removed from the proposal
   after the PPRP cuts. This person will work on optic fibre networking.
   The funding should arrive very soon and RHUL have already started
   preparations for hiring an RA, hopefully having someone in place by
   the end of the summer. There was no disagreement with Matthew's
   proposal so he will go ahead with the arrangements.
 o WP3: As Mike Tyndel had had to leave, Paul reported that Mike had
   negotiated with John Wormesley to start the RAL/PPD RA earlier
   than Apr07; he also hopes to have someone in place by the end of
   the summer. If someone with a lot of experience is found, the post
   could be made permanent. This will be done in such a way that the
   total cost of RAL/PPD effort to PPARC does not exceed the ringfence.
 o WP4: Paul commented that the bonding issues being considered here
   are very similar to those in WP3 and some coordination would be good.


7) Travel budget and upcoming meetings: It looks like we will have a
   reasonable amount of travel money for this year and so people should
   not feel too limited about which ILC meetings they can attend. The
   next is the North American ILC meeting in Vancouver but there was no
   one who is likely to attend from the UK. The next EFCA meeting is in
   Valencia in early Nov and Paul and Mike Green both hope to attend.
   The RAs should all be encouraged to go, particularly as we should
   have some results from CERN by that time. Matthew pointed out the
   EUDET travel money cannot be rolled over each year so he will ensure
   this is spent in preference to the PPARC funding where possible.

   It is likely we may have travel funds left over this year; Paul
   hopes it would be possible to transfer these to equipment funds.
   However, apparently OsCs can be quite difficult about such movement
   of funds so this would need a good case, in particular that we did
   not cut back on necessary travel just to bail out a failing WP.


8) Next meeting: This needs to be before the next OsC meeting. We should
 also have a general CALICE-UK meeting. The dates chosen were Mon 11 Sep
 afternoon for the UK Steering Board and Tue 12 Sep for the general
 meeting. Dave volunteered Manchester to host this.

 ACTIONS: Paul to announce this, Dave to book rooms, Matthew to
 contact Chris Targett-Adams and (assuming he agrees), to get him to
 put together an agenda for the general meeting.

 [Note added after the meeting: These dates conflict with the RAL
 Summer School. Dave is a tutor and the two first year students will
 attend so the dates may need to be changed.]