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Judges must be TAC Members.

Travel Agent liaison

Financial co-ordinator

A TAC Member, typically who judged, who will sanity check proposed itineraries and costs associated with them, and will approve those for booking. They will also give a yes/no to proposed alterations that attendees request with noticeable cost or visa implications, such as staying an extra week or going with a different airline.

EA Support for TAC

We have limited time from the Executive Assistant to work with TAC, but in order to make the most use of that limited resource, we need to be careful about what we do and don't ask of them.

The EA's role is mostly around liaising with external parties, in a consistent way with a single voice. This normally means flights, hotels, financials etc. (The EA will not normally communicate with the applicants). The EA will take the information gathered by the Shepherds on travel requirements, and will pass that to the Travel Agent. The resulting itineraries will be passed to the shepherds to go out to applicants, and once approved by the applicant + shepherd + financial co-ordination, will tell the Travel Agent to issue the ticket. They will pass the issued ticket to the shepherd.

They will work with the hotel on room assignments, based on Shepherd supplied requirements (including where attendees are covering some cost).

They will work with the treasurer, the committee chair and virtual to get payments made, and will work with willing committee members to use personal cards as a last resortOne person who works with an approved Travel Agent to get them all the information they need in order to book travel tickets. This person will have access to the webapp data to retrieve most of the details required. Any remaining information should be obtained from the Shepherds. The liaison should also be able to co-ordinate between the Treasurer (and other credit card holders if neccessary) and the TAC co-ordinator in order to get the tickets paid.

Shepherd

Once applicants have been approved by the judges and they have accepted, Shepherds are assigned to be the main contact point between the applicant and the TAC list. Ensuring that the applicant is kept well informed throughout the rest of the process up until tickets have been issued. Shepherds may be asked by the Travel Agent (TA) liaison to obtain further information and clarity from the the applicants under their charge. Even though Visas should be in place and full information provided by the applicant on the application forms, in the past it has not been quite so straight forward; and some Visas do require proof of attendance before being officially approved so it is up to the shepherds to ask for and obtain any required documentation from the TAC co-ordinator. (Required documentation is usually proof of Hotel stay, proof of conference registration etc, so it makes sense that one point of contact obtains this info and passes it on)

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