If your institution is able to host the next openmod workshop, planned for April 2018 (or thereabouts), please reply to this thread by the evening of Monday 8th January 2018. You can find out more about what’s involved in organising the workshop here:
I can assist the organizers with some tips and help with some online tasks.
Looking forward to seeing you all!
Kais
We, the Climate Policy Group at ETH Zürich, would be delighted to host the next workshop in Zürich. However, due to limited room availability, we cannot realistically host during the semester here.
I propose to move the workshop into later spring, to the 6th-8th June 2018 (Wed-Fri), which is the first week of semester break here in Zurich. We have a nice range of workshop rooms available at our campus in central Zürich on those dates.
In fact, June is a fantastic time to visit Zürich; at this time of year we can also organise a day trip into the Swiss alps before or after the main workshop program 
There were the open point if we could eventually join the openmod meeting with the EMP-E (Energy modelling platform for Europe) - the organizing committee just decided to shift the EMP-E meeting to September. So this discussion is out for the spring meeting of openmod.
To offer some alternative dates (and location) for the next OpenMod meeting, we’d also be happy to host the spring workshop at IIASA. We have some fancy material to be released soon, and the Energy Program in particular is excited to get more involved in the open (energy and beyond) modelling community!
The feasible options for the meeting would be either 25-27 April or 16-18 May, with Thursday/Friday for the workshop and Wednesday as a day for (optional) tutorials. The workshop would be hosted at IIASA (Laxenburg, 25 km south of Vienna) and we’d provide a shuttle bus from/to a central location in Vienna so that participants can find accommodation there.
TU Berlin, Workgroup for Infrastructure Policy (WIP) could offer Berlin as the next OpenMod workshop location from April 4 to 6, 2018 (optional tutorials on Wednesday, workshop on Thursday/Friday), before the semester starts and our floors are flooded with students again. There would be one big room for 60 to 80 participants and two or three smaller ones for brakeout sessions available.
Hello Jens. There has been some discussion that the next workshop should better not be held in Germany. Here is a list of previous events with 4 of 7 already in Germany. Of course, each institution is welcome to pitch. But I suspect that the “somewhere else” sentiment will prevail, at least this time round and particularly with offers from Austria and Switzerland. There will be a vote in due course though. Which, unlike the Olympics or FIFA, should be free and fair? Robbie
Hi Robbie,
Just wanted to float the option. If “not Germany” is the superior decision variable thats totally ok for us. Vienna and Zurich are also very nice locations (and colleagues for that matter). Our offer would also stand for future workshops.
Best,
Jens
Hi Robbie/all, I also remember that discussion about not organizing the upcoming workshop in Germany. However, if we decide to provide as many locations as possible or get a collection of possible locations (thank you, Jens!), there is also the offer to host the workshop in Oldenburg at the DLR Institute of Networked Energy Systems (in this round about 25.-27.04.2018). Best, Julian
Hello everyone!
To sum up the discussion, the following institutions offered to host the workshop:
| Institution | Location | Date |
|---|---|---|
| WIP, TU Berlin | Berlin, Germany | 4–6 April 2018 |
| DLR | Oldenburg, Germany | 25–27 April 2018 |
| IIASA | Laxenburg/Vienna, Austria | 25–27 April 2018 |
| ETH Zurich | Zürich, Switzerland | 6–8 June 2018 |
You can still offer to host the next workshop until Monday, January 8. After that, we will have to vote on the next location.
Thank you for your enthusiasm
Cheers,
Kais
I think there’s a strong case for preferring countries where there hasn’t been an openmod workshop before, since we can use the workshop to promote open energy modelling in places where people might not have heard of it. The initiative is already quite Germany-centric…
However, I’m not sure how best to implement this, particularly as we have very kind offers from TU Berlin and DLR this time and we don’t want to deter people from hosting. We can either let it go to the demos for a free vote, or exclude the German options from the start, or perhaps have a free vote this time but institute a “default to country where no previous workshop” rule in future? Any suggestions?
I would prefer to organize a free vote. I think many people presented their arguments for a workshop outside Germany. But there are also arguments for a workshop to be organized in Germany as well (accessibility/funding for a big part of the community, etc.). So I will let the voters decide
I would kindly ask you to vote for the location and time of the next workshop until Friday 12 January 2018 at 18:00.
You can choose up to two locations.
0 voters
Thank you all for taking part in the vote. I am happy to announce that the majority has voted for ETH Zurich and the workshop will take place on 6–8 June 2018.
@stefan.pfenninger would you please confirm that you are able to host the next workshop?
Also many thanks to @danielhuppmann (Vienna), @Julian_Bartels (Oldenburg) and @jens.weibezahn (Berlin) for volunteering. You can still contribute by taking care of some organizational tasks.
I can confirm that we will host in Zürich 6-8 June. More details to follow soon!
The wiki page for the Zurich workshop is here:
https://wiki.openmod-initiative.org/wiki/Open_Energy_Modelling_Workshop_-_Zurich_2018
This will be updated as more information becomes available.
Hey, I was wondering where we collect ideas for the openmod workshop? Should we just add a list with ideas at the bottom of the wiki page?
I opened another topic about the workshop in Zürich. Feel free to post any comments or ideas over there.
You can obviously always contact Stefan or myself directly.