Conference agenda catalog in a single page

[theo-armour]

@ibpsa2017/core

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🔗 Conference agenda catalog in a single page

Building Simulation 2017 is a huge operation. There are hundreds of sessions. We count over 360 submitted papers.

With so much going on it feels like Disneyland, there's fun and eye-candy and good stuff all over the place. So what sessions should you attend? How should you plan your day?

The official catalog is here:

🔗 Building Simulation Conference Agenda

The catalog is extensive and has a lot of features. You can print each page and the app allows you to limit the number of columns for nicer printing. There does not seem to be a method to print the entire catalog. You must print each session individually. Some pages - not all - allow you to enlarge the text. Every session with a PDF allows you to download the PDF but, sadly, not view it online. Of course, speakers and their organizations are listed though there are no links to the Authors pages. The time and place for every session is listed though there seems to be no way to see what is going on at any specific day and time

With all of this is going on it is a good thing to do as much planning as possible prior to the events. You want to be attending not selecting.

So the more planning aids the better. Just like a building sim, you want to look at the same data in different ways. The architect, civil engineer and HVAC installer all have different needs and perspectives on a structure. Ditto conferences.

One helpful thing might be viewing the entire catalog in a single page.

So we built a listing of all the sessions listed in the Conference Agenda wrapped up in a single page.

Features include:

• Instead of spending time clicking you could be scrolling and reading.
• You can search for words and text in the abstracts, organization names and elsewhere and not just search in author names and session titles as limited by the catalog.
• You could print the entire thing or download the file - it's just a single HTML page, even though that might be a bit old-school. ;-)
• You can enlarge or reduce the text for the entire document. If anybody has reading issues we can whip out a version customized for special needs.

There are, however, a number of issues with this first attempt.

The items are in the order of the way way they are numbered as web pages. For example:

https://www.conftool.pro/bs2017/index.php?page=browseSessions&form_session=198

The order looks like it has something to do with the order items were created - which is not that useful now. Not to worry. If you see a session you like, you may click the header and see the entry in the real catalog. In many instances there is a link to the PDF file associated with the presentation.

Things we would like to do include:

• Reorder the sessions info in more logical ways including by time or topic
• Create links to the PDFs so you can read them online and not have to download them one by one
• Include links to web sites for all the organizations listed

By the way, the data was collected by algorithm, so we have no idea if all the sessions and their data are included. Please base your decisions on the real catalog.

Anyway, it's a start. We hope this little effort make the process of finding sessions that suit your needs a bit faster.

[theo-armour]

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