Member lab guidelines

What joining asks of a lab, what hosting a seminar involves, what a lab may contribute, and what the network never asks for.

Joining asks three things of a lab: that it takes part in the network’s activities, that it takes its turn hosting a seminar, and that it passes on what is useful to the other labs. There is no fee, no minimum attendance, and nothing a lab must share that it would rather keep. What the network is, who coordinates it and how its rules change are in the charter, which governs wherever that document and this one differ.

Who this applies to

These expectations are written for member labs: PI-led groups at institutions in the Greater Bay Area cities the charter lists. Affiliate labs, which take part from elsewhere, are welcome in every activity on the same terms, but they are not in the hosting rotation and carry no obligation beyond the code of conduct.

Membership is by lab, not by person. Students, postdocs and research staff take part as audience, with nothing to apply for.

Taking part

Member labs are expected to take part in the network’s activities: the seminar series first of all, then workshops, summer schools and events for students and postdocs. Taking part means the lab appears, not that the PI does. A lab is present when its students and postdocs turn up.

There is no minimum attendance requirement and nobody keeps a register. Teaching, fieldwork and grant deadlines fall unevenly across eleven cities, so a rule counting seminars would measure the calendar rather than the commitment. Attendance is not a condition of listing: a lab leaves the roster only in the ways the charter sets out under delisting and annual refresh, or under the code of conduct as a last resort for a conduct breach. The annual confirmation of each entry still has to be answered.

Membership should still mean something. A lab that never appears, never hosts and never answers is not a member lab in any useful sense, and the network would rather keep a short roster that is true.

Hosting a seminar in turn

Member labs take turns hosting the seminar series, and how often a turn comes round depends on how many labs are listed. The slot and the format are proposals until the founding labs ratify the charter; the proposal as it stands is on the events page.

When a lab’s turn comes, it is normally responsible for:

• proposing or inviting the speaker, from the nomination queue or from its own contacts;
• agreeing the date and the format with the speaker, and telling the coordinators;
• chairing the session, normally the PI;
• circulating the announcement and the poster in its department and its own academic networks.

The meeting link is the one thing that does not circulate: it goes to the announcement list and the group chat, and never onto the site. Those four duties are the shape of the job rather than the whole of it. The full timeline, from eight weeks before the talk to a week after, is in hosting a seminar.

Slots can be traded. If a date does not work, swap with another lab and tell the coordinators the new order; if no swap can be found, ask them to defer the lab to a later round. Do not let a slot go empty without telling anyone.

Contributing to the network

Beyond hosting, a member lab is asked to pass on what it already has:

• teaching material, whether notebooks, courses, recordings, datasets or tutorials;
• open positions, from PhD places to faculty searches;
• speaker nominations, including people outside the network;
• encouragement to its students and postdocs to attend, and to take the junior slot;
• proposals for joint activities across institutions, such as a workshop or a summer school.

Tutorials, positions, events and speaker nominations each have a form on the join page, and the tutorial form takes courses and datasets as well as notebooks. Anything without a form goes to the coordinators as an issue or by email. Teaching material stays where its authors host it, because the resources page is an index and links to material rather than storing it.

There is no expectation that a lab shares unpublished data, research ideas, funding or other confidential material. Membership asks for what a lab can already say in public, and for its share of the hosting. Collaborations may grow out of the seminars, but they are agreements between labs, not obligations of membership.

Conduct

The code of conduct covers every activity run under the network’s name and everyone taking part, coordinators included: what is expected, what is not accepted, how to report a problem, and what coordinators do about it. Read it once, and point your students at it before their first seminar.

Questions and changes

Anything unclear here goes to a coordinator, or to the contact address on the about page. This page changes the way the rest of the site does, as a pull request in the repository, open for anyone to comment on.