Many of the international members of the InterAction collaboration met at TRIUMF on October 30 and 31. InterAction is a collaboration among the communications experts at different physics laboratories, and the meeting reviewed lab communications and coordination strategies with different perspectives from around the world.
The InterAction Collaboration was created in 2001 to increase international support for particle physics as well as to strengthen collaboration between communicators at individual physics laboratories. It also provides communications resources for its many international partners, ranging from daily news updates to an extensive image bank, via its website, Interactions.org. TRIUMF joined the InterAction Collaboration in November 2003, and this is its first time to host a meeting.
Twice every year, members from the many participating laboratories around the world meet to share communication strategies for promoting particle physics. For this meeting, InterAction members from the United States (Fermilab, Berkeley Lab, US/LHC, and SLAC), Japan (KEK and IPMU), France (IN2P3), Switzerland (CERN), and Germany (DESY) attended the Vancouver meeting held at TRIUMF. October’s meeting was the first for the newest physics laboratory to join InterAction, the Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe in Japan. At the meeting, prominent subjects included the Large Hadron Collider, community outreach, and new communication methods on the Internet.
The attending members expressed how very impressed they were with Tim Meyer and Marcello Pavan for their efforts in ensuring an excellent and productive meeting. The next meeting will take place at Japan’s IPMU in April 2009.
Kaitlan Huckabone
TRIUMF's Communications Assistant