LHCP 2018

The First LHCP Edition to Go Digital

The LHCP series brings together experimentalists and theorists to review the latest LHC results. The 2018 edition in Bologna gathered roughly 350 participants across five topical tracks covering Higgs boson measurements, heavy-flavour physics, and beyond-the-Standard-Model searches. It was also the first LHCP to trial a dedicated conference app.

Replacing Daily Email Bulletins

Before HEPCon, LHCP organisers sent nightly emails listing the next day’s room assignments and any last-minute speaker swaps. By 2018 this practice was reaching its limits: emails arrived too late for early-morning sessions, and attendees in different time zones frequently missed them. HEPCon’s push-notification channel replaced the email bulletin entirely. When the LOC updated a session in CERN Indico, the change propagated to every phone within minutes.

Lightweight Setup for a Lean LOC

LHCP LOCs typically run with a small organising team. The Bologna committee valued HEPCon’s zero-maintenance Indico sync: once the initial import was configured, no manual data entry was required for the entire week. The LOC estimated this saved roughly two person-days of volunteer time that would otherwise have gone to copy-pasting timetable updates.

Offline Access in Lecture Halls

Bologna’s historic university buildings offered patchy Wi-Fi in some lecture rooms. HEPCon’s PWA cached the full timetable on first load, so attendees could browse sessions and read abstracts even without a connection.