CHEP 2023 conference app — search, filters, and sponsor placements for 600 attendees at Jefferson Lab

CHEP 2023 — the 26th International Conference on Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics — was hosted by Jefferson Lab and held in Norfolk, Virginia, USA, from 8 to 12 May 2023. Around 600 participants convened to share advances in software frameworks, heterogeneous computing, AI/ML pipelines, and distributed data management for current and future experiments.

With 13 scientific tracks, 540 oral presentations, and 138 posters, CHEP 2023 delivered one of the most software-intensive programmes in the conference series, reflecting the community's push toward sustainable software and analysis facilities.

The Challenge: A Software-Heavy Programme with Deep Technical Content

Unlike conferences that follow a clear hierarchy of plenary-then-parallel sessions, CHEP programmes are almost entirely parallel from the start. Attendees often need to jump between tracks — for example, catching a talk on GPU-accelerated reconstruction in one session and then moving to a data lake strategy discussion in another.

With 13 tracks running simultaneously, the ability to search by keyword, speaker name, or abstract text was critical for day-to-day planning.

How HEPCon Helped

HEPCon imported the complete CHEP 2023 programme and provided full-text search across titles, abstracts, and speaker names, allowing attendees to locate specific topics in seconds. Track-based colour-coded filters showed the day's schedule for any subset of tracks, and the PWA ensured fast load times throughout the busy conference venue.

Sponsor placements were integrated with analytics, giving vendors quantitative data on impressions and engagement.

Outcome

The full-text search capability received strong positive feedback from attendees who had previously relied on PDF proceedings or manual timetable browsing. Sponsors benefited from transparent metrics, and the organisers managed the large programme with significantly less manual communication effort.