From time to time we have gotten questions from people wanting to start a national committee on what they could do or where they should start. Below is a list, in no particular order, with some of these questions and some frank answers or thoughts that might help.

If you have particular questions about setting up a national committee or what to talk to someone who has done this type of thing before, please contact the APECS Executive Committee (excom@apecs.is) and we can help you find some great resources.

How do I find members and keep them connected?

As a first step for every nationalregional committee, we would HIGHLY recommend creating a mailing list under the APECS umbrella. This list is always maintained and all your national committee members will be APECS International members and it will be easier for everyone to stay connected. This list is free for us and for you - and since we have such a great MIC membership chair who updates these lists every month, you don't have to worry about maintaining them too much... and you can have a fun address for your group (i.e. spain@apecs.is). APECS International also use these lists to send various national opportunities that come our way.

To find members - put together a list of institutions in your country that have people doing polar research... many national funding agencies publish the grants that they have funded - look at those lists and make a note of the professors, departments, universities, and institutions - then do some googling to find the person at those places that is in charge of either graduate students, or the secretary - as they usually have the ability to email the full department with announcements... then create a simple email - in your own language - that says a little about APECS, and that you want to start a national APECS chapter... and ask if anyone is interested to contact you... and to join APECS of course! You might also want to put in that email a few things that you might want to do - like hold an online (free) poster session where people in your country can share their research with others, or perhaps you want to have everyone over to your apartment for a party, or maybe there is an invited speaker coming to give a talk at your University and that would be a good chance to get other people from your country to come together to meet with that speaker and to talk about building a national committee... just throw out some ideas and see what happens! (N.B. You may need to do this before having a website - or just create a simple page and use this to ask people want they would want to see on it... and build some ideas that way... as part of your list of other things the NC can do.)

Do we need a website?

What would be the purpose of your site?
Is it just to have information about your group and what is happening in your country or do you want to have something bigger where people have profiles and log ins and all kinds of fancy stuff... if you want it to have fancy stuff, consider if you really need that... most of your people are probably on Facebook... so maybe you just need a facebook page for discussions (which can be linked from your site) and a basic page with information on your group? We suggest keeping your site simple... remember you won't be around forever and other people will have to take over the maintenance... and you will have to convince someone new to run the website... and as you can see from our main APECS international page, it can be a challenge to convince people to post information.... so the simpler you can keep your site, the better!

Whatever you decide, make sure you write up a plan for your site before you build it: What do you want it to say? What are the main headings you want to use? How will it be updated?

What is your capacity to build/host/maintain a site?
Do you know someone who is a web designer - if so you are lucky... but did you also know that anyone who can use MS Word or Google Docs can also create a website... literally in minutes!?! Wordpress, Blogger, and Google Sites are all free tools that allow you to create a decent website with little effort and no money. If you are planning to mainly just share information and resources for APECS members in your country, we would highly suggest this as its easy... really it is!

You can also have us create a page for you under the main APECS website - something like: http://apecs.is/spain - APECS is Spain :) Think long term here - and also consider what types of challenges you might encounter if you ask an institution to host your site... sometimes all content posted on institution based websites needs to be approved by various levels of administration, which can take a while... so if you want to be able to post things yourselves and quickly - you may want to think about one of the above options. It really doesn't matter to the international APECS what you name your group or your website - just as long as you include in all your publications, etc. that you are the national chapter of APECS international.

What can a National Committee do?

We mentioned a few examples above but will list some more random ideas here - and we are sure there are many ideas that people will come up - but first you need to pick a few 'core activities' that will you do… this is why APECS focuses so much on career development - this is the stuff most young researchers don't get... so you can have a few workshops to help people with writing and/or presentation skills, have a webinar on funding sources in your country or for you to travel to other countries, plan some education and outreach activities with local schools (high level university administrators love this stuff... and will usually be helpful if you tell them you will write a press release for the local newspaper), if you don't already have one, plan a seminar series - where you invite senior and early career researchers to present their work (this can also be online and in your own language), ask people to start putting together a list of various online career development guides in your language, if there is an international meeting coming up in your country - plan an APECS panel... this will bring your people together with international folks and will be a great 'launch event' for your national committee, start a blog where each week/month one of your members writes a quick 1-2 paragraph summary of their research and what they are working on.

Do I need high level support from administrators, etc?

This can be tricky... you should most definitely find a few good senior mentors that can help you and APECS has grown enough now and is well enough respected, that we have champions in many many countries... so just ask the excom if you need some advice here. The reason we say this can be tricky, because in some countries where things are done 'top down' there may be a desire by senior level administrators to have total control over what you do as a national committee… if the administrator is proactive, supportive, and 'gets it' this can be a huge advantage... if the administrators are 'old school' and don't think you are as clever as we all do, then you may end up stuck in a position where nothing happens because this top-level person is too busy with other things and is not giving you the freedom you need to get the job done. If this situation arises, let the excom know - sometimes an 'official' letter from the international office can help to push these folks a little bit (but be prepared to draft the letter to help save us some time). Personally, we think its the support from principle investigators and professors that is most important; if you can get a few of these people behind you, they can go to the top level folks on your behalf to help push things. We see the APECS National Committees group as a great place for all of you to share your experiences with this particular topic - to provide advice and guidance when needed. It has proven to be very helpful in the past and we hope it will continue to be.

Does the national committee need an official 'structure'?

We would say yes, it helps - you should have a small group of 'doers' as the executive committee or council and you should have a chair/president - but again, don't get too bogged down in titles and roles - just make sure you have a good group of people you can count on to do stuff - people that are there to make a difference, not just to put something on their resume. You should also try to find people at different levels in their studies... so that not all of you are in your final year of the PhD and will be leaving next year. You need to make sure there is a mix so that when one person leaves and someone new comes in, there are people around that can share what happened in the past and people who can take ideas into the future. This is critical to long-term success. Also make sure you are constantly looking for your replacement... someday you will graduate or get a permanent job and won't be a 'young researcher' anymore, so start planning for that now. It might sound weird to think that way, but this is where most of the past national committees have failed or died out: there was no one new to take over! Also try to make sure that you have people from different institutions and cities... this helps to make sure its a real national/regional committee and not just an APECS University of Tromsø group (but those groups are fine too, just be sure to call it that then).

You will probably also need some kind of 'constitution' - just as a guide to help you make sure there are rules for replacing people and filling spots when people leave. But again, don't get too wrapped up in these documents - it can really suck the life out of a group - use the APECS international documents as a guide, they work well. We are sure some of the other national groups have documents like this to share too, so ask around. These documents also help to show that you 'exist' as some funding bodies need to see these types of documents in order to trust you with funds.

Do we need to be a registered organization?

This depends on the country and can get quite complicated. So, unless you have a mentor who knows exactly how to do this, we would recommend not making this your first order of business. Instead, partner with another group that is already registered and see how you can work together. There are now many non-profit organizations that focus on science education, outreach, the polar regions, etc - and these are generally 'established' groups so they can help you with a lot of the legal stuff that you don't have time for! ICSU (the International Council for Science - co-sponsored the recent IPY) has regional offices that can also help - APECS is now known pretty well within the ICSU leadership - so these important and often powerful groups can really help you out. Their job is to foster science collaborations and in the new ICSU strategy Polar Research is listed as a priority, so these two things together provide a very strong case for you to approach the ICSU regional offices for help. Again, the ExCom/Directorate are happy to write a letter of introduction if you think that will help. Using these other established groups to help you is also a good way to 'bypass' difficult administrations as especially in the ICSU case, they may be 'higher level' than your institution, so their support can be helpful in convincing your superiors to help out - but be careful and do this nicely!

How do we link our national committee to APECS international?

The main purpose of the APECS Council is to make sure every national committee has a representative to share information from your group to the international members and to let your members know about important international things. But its more than that - working with your international colleagues is great for so many reasons!! As of now we do not have anything else to 'official' as to how the international organization links with the national ones because we feel this gives national committees more freedom to do what they need to and to operate in the way that is best for them. If you want to set up formal agreements, etc - we can do this - whatever you need to make your national committee happen. In some cases it is good to have the international apecs have a stake in your organization... then we are better able to help you with transitioning, funding, etc. If you need an international partner or organization to register a domain name or help you apply for funding, etc - we can provide that for you. The bottom line here is that every country is different and every national committee will need different levels of support from the international office - so just ask for what you need and we can see what we can do (but remember, we only have 1 staff!).

That's a lot of info - what do I do first?

Starting a National Committee takes thought and planning but shouldn't be a soul-crushing experience. Just remember that it's all about having fun in connecting with other polar researchers in your area! Here's a quick summary of the important first steps to take in founding your own national committee:

• Create a mailing list
• Recruit members and get people involved
• Maybe create a webpage or subpage on the APECS site
• Have some concrete goals for people to focus on
• Always think of the future of the committee!

And contact us if you need more help!

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