We are planning a meeting in which scientific discussions have an important place. This is in the spirit of the previous massive-star meetings that have been organized in Quebec in the past; indeed, we have found that a free and long-enough discussion among all participants is often the most interesting and stimulating part of a meeting. We wish to maximize each participant’s involvement in these discussions for the benefit of all coming to the meeting. We hope that our gathering will serve to stimulate new ideas and perhaps be a catalyst for new collaborations.

The meeting will be divided in a number of main topics (see meeting abstract) for which we will have one or two invited talks of 30 minutes and a series of contributed talks of 20 minutes. At the end of each section, we will hold an hour-long discussion chaired by a carefully selected participant. We envisage that the contributed talks play an important role in shaping the discussion sessions. Therefore we will request that each speaker giving a contributed talk raises one or two important questions related to the topic they have presented and that he or she considers needs particular attention. The speaker presenting the invited talk for each section will be asked to summarize, at the end of the discussion, the main questions that have been raised and to provide a short text to be included in the proceedings.

At the end of the entire meeting, we will also have an hour-long discussion to re-visit the most interesting topics that participants wish to emphasize.

Considering what has been stated above, we estimate that there will be approximately a dozen invited talks and around fifty contributed talks, for a total near 60 talks. Therefore, we also plan to have posters in order for each participant to have the chance to present something. The SOC will attribute the invited and contributed talks at the beginning of May.