HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005
Indico: An Event
Management Software
(and more)
Thomas Baron – CERN – IT
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005
Thomas Baron – CERN – IT
Outline
Project history
Technical details
Conference management
Lecture/meeting management
Planning/Archiving tool
Indico: future trends and related collaborative tools
CDS Agenda:
 Created in 1999 following a
request by ATLAS
 Stores timetable of events and
related files
 At CERN:used by various projects,
departments, experiments and
committees
CDS Agenda usage at CERN
number of agendas
Thomas Baron – CERN – IT
Project History
5386
2004
2005(until
end Sep)
3519
2492
437
1999
998
2000
1359
2001
2002
2003
 Available as open-source under the GNU GPL and installed in several
places worldwide:
IN2P3, NiKHEF, DESY (ILC), ICTP, Elettra Trieste…
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005
5107
 Is used to create headers of many web pages (CERN, ATLAS, CMS…)
 http://agenda.cern.ch
 Hosts mainly seminars, meetings and small conferences
TOO LIMITED SCOPE
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005
Thomas Baron – CERN – IT
Project History
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)
 Currently hosts >45 conferences
 Usage is growing fast
 Also available as open-source under the GNU GPL
 http://indico.cern.ch
 Current migration of CDS Agenda events to Indico
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005
Thomas Baron – CERN – IT
Technical Details
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
Interfaces:
 Web, OAI (Open Archive Initiative) protocol for metadata harvesting
 Tested on Windows, linux
InDiCo is distributed under the GNU General Public
License and is fully open source
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005
Thomas Baron – CERN – IT
Technical Details
Software architecture
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005
Thomas Baron – CERN – IT
Conference Management
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005
Thomas Baron – CERN – IT
Conference Management
A complex event…
human
logical
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005
Thomas Baron – CERN – IT
Conference Management
…with a lot of processes
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005
Thomas Baron – CERN – IT
Conference Management
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
 Various listings (contributions, authors, speakers,
registrants…) and communication means.
 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
Thomas Baron – CERN – IT
Meeting Management
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005
Less actors, less processes: smaller complexity
Same basis but simplified interfaces
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
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005
Thomas Baron – CERN – IT
Planning/Archiving Tool
One server – Many events of various sizes
Hierarchical organisation: tree of categories to classify the events
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005
Thomas Baron – CERN – IT
Planning/Archiving Tool
Various handy temporal views:
overview
calendar
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005
Thomas Baron – CERN – IT
Planning/Archiving Tool
Long-term archival of the events metadata and related
material
Browsing capability
Search engine: uses CDSware
Export tools: creation of external web pages (ATLAS
home page, LHCb…)
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005
Thomas Baron – CERN – IT
Future Trends and Related Collaboration
Tools
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)
 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.
Indico live usage:
 Collaborative features: instant messaging/chat and presence
 Webconferencing
user
ROOM 1
smac
controller
Indico
SMAC
Web
lecture
object
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005
manager
Central Server request Server
request
smac
controller
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.
ROOM 2
smac
controller
Thomas Baron – CERN – IT
Future Trends and Related Collaboration
Tools
ROOM 3
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005
Thomas Baron – CERN – IT
Future Trends and Related Collaboration
Tools
Example of a SMAC web lecture
Thomas Baron – CERN – IT
HEPiX Fall Meeting 2005
QUESTIONS
Project web page:
http://cern.ch/indico
Production@CERN: http://indico.cern.ch
Contact:
mailto:indico-project@cern.ch