On October 7 I raised the possibility of organising a BUGS workshop. To date I have received about 25 favourable replies, some individuals, some representing groups of statisticians and others from the US whom I assume will not attend a meeting in the UK. I believe there is enough interest to proceed with organising such a meeting, especially as there is likely to be others outside the BUGS mailing list who would be also interested. I have provisionally booked Errol St. (RSS HQ in London) for Thursday June 24. Both David Spiegelhalter and Nicky Best have agreed to take part. My suggested working title for this meeting is "Practical Bayes using BUGS". Personally I would wish this workshop to be predominantly about practical application issues. Examples might include: How to use DOODLEBUGS (advantages?) Assessing convergence Model validation Specifying "weak" priors in "non-standard" but reasonably common situations Understanding error messages, common mistakes, FAQ's, "tricks & tips" Practical issues with non log-concave distributions (?) Effect & implications of different parameterisations - good & bad practice Some specific issues that were raised: multinomial probit models, BMA Some of these issues could be discussed via poster presentations. My current thoughts on the format of the meeting are to base the day around 4,say, breakout small discussion groups - each on a specific topic. Each group then presents back to the whole in the afternoon; these "presentations" could take many forms: problems posed and tentative solutions offered for discussion, good/bad egs shared, "cries for help", ... Concurrent with this could be the poster presentations. It would be nice to finish the day with a brief talk on future BUGS developments. We could also use the day to obtain feedback on the additional BUGS features that users would like, and current features not liked. Alternatively this could be the main focus of the day. The meeting will be advertised in RSS News and allstat March/April next year. If you have any comments on my proposals, or suggestions for wider advertising I would very much welcome them. It would be particularly useful to receive "votes", from likely attendees, on which topics are of interest and whether the proposed format is appropriate (alternative suggestions are encouraged). Also, if you wish to offer a poster presentation please forward me a synopsis, preferably by end of February '99. To avoid general annoyance, please reply direct to me and not the mailing list. I will update the list on progress early in the new year. Regards Phil LEGAL NOTICE Unless expressly stated otherwise, this message is confidential and may be privileged. It is intended for the addressee(s) only. Access to this e-mail by anyone else is unauthorised. If you are not an addressee, any disclosure or copying of the contents of this e-mail or any action taken (or not taken) in reliance on it is unauthorised and may be unlawful. If you are not an addressee, please inform the sender immediately. Pfizer Limited is registered in England under No. 526209 with its registered office at Ramsgate Road, Sandwich, Kent CT13 9NJ %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%