Conference Room Information

NIH Events Management Website

OD will cover the cost of conference rooms for the inter-institute scientific interest groups. To make arrangements, call Conference Services. When they ask for billing information, you should tell the reservationist that this is for an approved inter-institute interest group and should be billed to the OD account that covers interest group room charges. Some of the reservationists are new and may not know that they should consult the list of approved IGs if they have any doubts. So if you encounter one of these new staff members, please direct them to their supervisor, Ms. Marianne Bachmann, who will tell them how to bill the charges. The reservation contact should be your IG's representative, and Conference Services should send the room confirmation to you. The billing information will be copied to Olive Childers in our office.

Conference Rooms and AV Services:

As described above, charges for conference room use will be covered by OD for approved inter-institute scientific interest groups. Some audiovisual charges will also be covered, either by OIR or OD. This is being worked out. We are telling groups that have not videocast their lectures before NOT to start doing so. Groups that have been doing this may continue to do so and OIR will be identifying a CAN (X-number) for these charges soon. A significant problem is that all broadcasts from NIH should be captioned for the deaf and hearing impaired. This dramatically raises the cost of the videocast; the quality of the captioning has been very low--too low to be comprehensible in the case of highly technical lectures. OIR will be appealing for an exception to the Section 508 requirement for captioning interest group lectures. In instances where a group is using pictureTel, dial-up service, or teleconferencing to specific, individual sites with defined attendance, IG contact people at all locations should poll the local membership to see if any members need translation services and should communicate these needs to the leader of the IG and make on-site arrangements in advance. If multiple sites have members who need captioning or sign language interpretation, please contact Celia as far in advance as possible and we will pursue closed captioning for the lectures.