Technical Committee Program Chair (TCPC) Guide

Panel Session Proposals for the General Meeting

In August of the year preceding the GM you are working on; you will reach out to your committee / subcommittee members for a call for panel sessions. They should email you their proposals by October 1.

You will then review the proposals and decide what panel sessions your committee will sponsor at the GM. Please reply to all panel proposers to let them know if the panel session is accepted or not.

Then you will access the GM MIRA paper submission and review site and enter the panel proposal. Instructions to enter the proposals in MIRA are below:

Panel Session Proposals for T&D

T&D typically asks that panel proposals from the committees be emailed to the designated email alias in the call for participation. They will decide what panels will be approved and communicate that to the TCPC. If your panel is accepted, it will need to be entered into MIRA, the steps below would be followed.

If the above process is not being implemented, TCPCs will add their panel requests directly into MIRA, the T&D Committee Program chair will let you know if the panel is accepted and if so, we can schedule the panels for the conference. The deadline dates for this will be on the T&D Deadline date doc.

Panel Session Proposals for Grid Edge

Grid Edge typically asks that panel proposals from the committees be emailed to the designated email alias in the call for participation or completed via a SS form. They will decide what panels will be approved and communicate that to the proposer. If your panel is accepted, it will need to be entered into MIRA, the steps below would be followed.

Instructions to enter panel proposals into MIRA

1. When you log onto the site – click on “TCPC Menu” in the upper left-hand corner of the screen – this is your TCPC menu and from here you will have access to your papers & assign them for review.
2. From the TCPC Menu click on “view manage panel session”
3. Click on Create a new panel session
4. Enter the session title
5. Enter a brief 150-word summary for the session
6. Provide an expected attendance for the session
7. Indicate the number of hours for the session
8. Indicate if the session topic overlaps with one of the super sessions, if so, indicate which super session. Super session topics are always part of the GM call for papers
9. Click on Save Proposal & Continue
10. Click on “add session chair”
11. Enter the chair’s last name and click on search
12. If the person is in the system, their information will pop up and you click on “add”
13. If the person is not in the system, you will be given a form to complete to create an account for them.
14. The system will then bring up their information for you to update if need be. Then click on “update
15. You can then click on “Finished adding session chairs & Speakers”
16. Then click on “submit my panel session to the session chair” – this will send an email to the session chairs and he or she will enter the panelists and their topics.

Once your panel session chair enters all the panelists for the session and clicks on “finished entering speakers” the panel proposal will move to the “program smart” module of MIRA.

It is in program smart that we will schedule the session date & time and enter a cosponsoring committee. This will be done after the TCPC meeting in January when the Vice Chair of Technical Council provides you with your date & time slots.

Once you have your assigned dates and times, you can go into program smart to enter the date & time of each session.

Entering Date & Time of panel sessions

1. Log into your TCPC menu
2. Click on “Manage sessions”
3. Click on “Edit session” next to the session you wish you update
4. Enter the session date for your session
5. Enter the start and end time
6. Enter the room configuration – panel sessions are a “theater set up”
7. Enter any cosponsoring committee by selecting the committee’s name from the drop-down
   menu
8. Enter the expected attendance
9. Enter any “notes” or special A/V requests (all panel sessions will have an LCD Projector and
   screen).
10. Then save the session

Updating Committee Meeting Requests that were Imported from the Previous Year’s GM

1. Go to your TCPC menu
2. Click on “Manage Committee Meeting requests”
3. Then if you scroll to “Edit Meeting Requests”
4. Here are all the committee meetings that were entered for the previous year’s GM
5. You can select the committee meeting you wish to edit from the drop-down list and then click on “edit meeting request”
6. Update the date and time for the meeting and make any other needed updates
7. Once you’re done editing the request click on “submit request’
8. If you need to delete the request you can do that as well, just click on “delete request”

To Enter a brand-new Committee Meeting Request

1. Click on “Manage Committee Meeting Requests”
2. Click on “Create new Committee Meeting Request”
3. Complete all the required fields and click on “Submit Request

Navigating the various paper statuses in your TCPC Menu

When you log onto the site – click on “TCPC Menu” this is your TCPC menu and from here you will have access to your papers & assign them for review.

If you click on “submission status” from the TCPC menu, you can click on the different categories to see the papers in the respective categories. For example:

Successfully submitted is what has been successfully submitted but not yet assigned for review (you can access submitted conference papers there by clicking on the number of submissions)

New – are submissions that have been initiated but not completed” – You cannot do anything with these papers – they are still with the authors waiting on complete submission

Pending Review – are papers assigned to at least one reviewer but not yet reviewed

Reviewed partially – are papers assigned to more than one reviewer and at least one review is completed

Reviewed total – are papers in which all of the reviewers completed their review but a decision has not yet been made by the Topic lead
 

To Add Reviewers to your Reviewer Pool

From the TCPC Menu

1. click on “manage my reviewers” at the bottom of your TCPC menu.
2. Type in the potential reviewer’s last name and first name (first name is not required), and click
   on “search for reviewer” if they are in the system, it will bring up their account and you can click on “add” to add them to your reviewer pool.
3. If they are not in the system – you will add them as a new reviewer, – you will need to enter
   their name, email address & affiliation click on “add reviewer”

To Assign Papers to Reviewers

1. From your TCPC menu – Click on “submission Status”
2. Then Click on the “number” in the successfully submitted area
3. Click on the paper title
4. Click on “assign / reassign reviewers”
5. You will then have a list of the reviewers you added to the system – you can select the appropriate reviewer(s) for each paper
6. Once you’ve selected the reviewer(s) – click on assign reviewer
7. The system will send them a message notifying the request to review the paper

Entering Decisions

1. Once all the assigned reviewers make their recommendations on the papers the papers will
   appear in the Reviewed Total area – you click on this area to access those papers and make the
   final decision.
2. From your TCPC menu – click on Submission Status
3. Click on the number in the “reviewed total” category
4. Click on the paper title
5. Here you can see the reviewer rank and comments
6. Scroll down and you can enter your decision, “accept, reject or revise resubmit” **Revise and
   resubmit is only available for the first decision period (about 2 months)
7. When you click on accept, reject, or revise, it will bring up a screen with the reviewer ranking
   and comments. Please only check the boxes to include the reviewer comments. Ranking and
   recommendation should not be sent to the authors, that is for your use.