Best Practices for Virtual Conferences Zoom Chat, July 24, 2020

12:25:07     From  pejman : Sorry if I missed this, but will we get a copy of these slides?
12:25:36     From  Jeanna Matthews : Yes @pejman we will share copies of slides :-)
12:26:02     From  pejman : Awesome, thank you!
12:26:17     From  Jeanna Matthews : Donna Cappo has them and is setting up a web page to share. Maybe already has?
12:26:39     From  Jeanna Matthews : If not, I would also be happy to send copies to anyone who needs them sooner.
12:28:14     From  Donna Cappo : We are setting up a page to include the slides, recording and chat. It will be available next week. You will receive a link
12:29:43     From  Jeanna Matthews : Here is a PDF of our slides for now: https://people.clarkson.edu/~jmatthew/publications/BestPracticesForVirtualConferences_20200717.pdf
12:36:38     From  Juliana Freire : VLDB 2020 will also have mirrored sessions, and some joint sessions during times that are ‘good’ for all timezones
12:37:34     From  Juliana Freire : https://vldb2020.org/program.html
12:42:14     From  Eelco Herder : Is there some threshold from which one can expect people misbehaving? At Hypertext (~80 participants) and UMAP (~180), conferences with a strong core community, we did not experience any misbehaving (as far as I know).
12:43:19     From  Ben Carterette : I believe ECIR back in April had some Zoom bombing from people outside the community
12:43:37     From  José Duato : No observed misbehavior at ISCA (~1700 participants)
12:43:59     From  Ali C. Begen : For MMSys (~200 people), we had no problems, either except the first day, warmup session, there were two zoom bombers because someone accidentally posted the zoom link on twitter. Apparently bots are scanning social media for zoom links.
12:44:43     From  José Duato : We explicitly prevented Zoom bombing by using Zoom webinar and not allowing attendees to use the video or microphone
12:44:50     From  Ayman Shamma : 👆 Warmup sessions are critical.
12:45:54     From  Jeanna Matthews : https://amimagazine.global/tech/brave-new-world-five-things-to-consider-before-going-virtual/
12:45:57     From  Stephanie Weirich : This is a good opportunity for SIGs to develop a uniform virtual code of conduct for all of their conferences.
12:46:07     From  Donna Cappo : Will do
12:46:10     From  Alex Potanin : Question: Out of curiosity, how many people treat the virtual conferences as something temporary or if we are likely to move towards some form of hybrid interaction forever and if we need to start exploring virtual conferences from this latter potential future perspective?
12:46:14     From  Ali C. Begen : Zoom webinar is good, but it was extra dollars.
12:46:49     From  José Duato : Yes, but that cost is negligible compared to expenses in a physical conference
12:47:52     From  José Duato : We are considering a hybrid format for ISCA2021
12:48:09     From  Juliana Freire : We had no misbehavior at SIGMOD 2020
12:48:23     From  Juliana Freire : And 3,000+ registered participants
12:49:05     From  Shan Lu (SIGOPS) : Any suggestion to registration fee?
12:49:30     From  Brusilovsky, Peter Leonid : How best practice recommendations take into account research on conference support that is mostly done by ACM researchers and frequently presented at CHI?
12:50:19     From  Eelco Visser : Benjamin dismissed the technical program, but are talks not good starting points for meeting like-interested people?
12:50:29     From  Brusilovsky, Peter Leonid : Any survey results analyzing user needs that could be shared? So far, we are focusing on the prospects and experience of organizers.
12:51:29     From  Eelco Visser : Benjamin dismissed the technical program, but are talks not good starting points for meeting like-interested people? I would think that live, interactive presentations with extended Q&A sessions would be a good way for (new) people to meet
12:51:41     From  Adam Bargteil : The sense I have from SIGGRAPH is that we expect to have some virtual component in the future, we were already planning one for 2020
12:52:00     From  Juliana Freire : SIGMOD charged for 1 author for each paper, and it was free for everybody else
12:52:18     From  Jeanna Matthews : https://www.acm.org/virtual-conferences
12:52:18     From  José Duato : I Will talk about fees later (ISCA2020)
12:52:21     From  Michael Zeller : Any experiences with how registration numbers ramp up before the conference? For our event at the end of August, we seem to be trailing quite a bit behind our typical numbers (as compared to the in-person events in past years).
12:52:28     From  Juliana Freire : We got very positive feedback and had many attendees who would never have attended the conference who did
12:52:30     From  Benjamin Pierce : @eelco: Apologies if it sounded like I was dismissing the technical program — of course, it is important.  All I was saying was that the issues there are relatively known and relatively straightforward to solve, compared to some of these novel issues (in part due to nice tools like Researchr!).
12:53:02     From  Benjamin Pierce : And yes, the technical program is an excellent backbone for instigating connections and conversations/
12:54:45     From  Juliana Freire : SIGMOD used the ACM zoom
12:54:50     From  Mario Montagud (i2CAT, UV) : ACM IMX used one of these ACM licenses 12:54:53     From  Ali C. Begen : I hope ACM zoom licenses were announced sooner.
12:55:07     From  Ayman Shamma : SIGCHI is on the schedule to present later too. :-)
12:57:08     From  VIJAYKRISHNAN NARAYANAN : DAC is finishing up this week - we have had record attendance at our keynotes
12:58:35     From  VIJAYKRISHNAN NARAYANAN : the interaction have been good but it please make sure that attendees do not compromise security by passing links to others or posting on social media
12:58:55     From  Raja Kushalnagar : If a conference provided captioning/subtitles, was it for presentations only, or for social events?
12:58:57     From  Ranjit Jhala’s : +1 to eelco’s remark — the “talks” are a crucial way to “synchronize” the audience — at PLDI as an audience member I thought the post-talk q&a was very effective as Benjamin points out
13:00:19     From  Vinay Setty : Do you recommend any tools for sharing the pre-recorded videos and make all the information such as have zoom links, links to chat rooms in one place and possibly also organise it as a calendar which is customisable to the time zone of the participant…
13:01:28     From  Benjamin Pierce : @Vinay: Stay tuned for the platforms session in an hour or so
13:02:05     From  Ranjit Jhala’s : COLT (no longer in ACM) did an interesting thing where talks were ALL asynchronous on YouTube — the only synchronous thing was 2hr sessions with 10 papers where each paper gets a 2 minute talk + 3 minute Q&A followed by 1hr breakouts discussing the papers in depth with whoever is interested.
13:02:24     From  Juliana Freire : SIGMOD did one
13:02:58     From  Benjamin Pierce : @Ranjit: There seem to be quite a few conferences trying variations on this.  Would love to see experience reports!
13:03:00     From  Juliana Freire : I can share the report prepared by the General Chairs
13:03:44     From  José Duato : Post-conference survey delivered very positive feedback, but participation was low. Only 120 responses out of 1700 attendees
13:04:12     From  Ali C. Begen : @Vinay, this is a home-made approach: https://2020.acmmmsys.org/attendee.php login with participant/mmsys_rocks. Overall it was well received by the attendees.
13:05:29     From  Benjamin Pierce : There is an appendix in the Task Force report on virtual conferences with a bunch of links to experience reports.  Please, anyone who’s written one, can you make sure yours is linked there?
13:06:28     From  Vinay Setty : @Ali, thanks for the link.. so home-made approach is the only option? Or I was wondering of there are some off-the-shelf products we can use
13:06:55     From  Brusilovsky, Peter Leonid : I would second Vinay’s question. Conference support platform is important. None seems to be perfect, yet it would be nice to see organizers and committee feedback on existing platforms like QOALA, Whova, etc.
13:07:16     From  Benjamin Pierce : Here’s a direct link to that appendix:
13:07:17     From  Benjamin Pierce : https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XsGDOHzBhY9S-D4Smp2p9JgqdI0umZ0IZVi7Nhm0gYg/edit#heading=h.5l5m1x6kpc7m
13:07:37     From  Ali C. Begen : @Vinay, we had the conference in early June. We wanted to minimize the cost as we made the event almost free for a lot of people e
13:07:59     From  Ali C. Begen : (except the authors). so I cooked up something with php/json… and it worked just fined.
13:08:16     From  Ali C. Begen : will be happy to share the code.
13:12:44     From  Vinay Setty : @Ali, that would be great if you could share a GitHub link here or I can contact you privately after the call.
13:14:17     From  Ali C. Begen : just email [email protected]!
13:14:21     From  Alex Potanin : I wonder if every conference can please mention how did they encourage "hallway track" (ad hoc interactions) and how well this worked or not (in retrospect) and their ideas as to why? This requires mentioning time zones and whether they attempted to take into account engagement of people in odd time zones or whether that part was not really addressed (because of time constraints presumably)?
13:16:20     From  Mark Sherriff (SIGCSE) : +1 to Alex's question above.
13:20:04     From  Benjamin Pierce : @Shan: Platforms like HotCRP offer really good tools for (asynchronous) virtual PC meetings.
13:20:42     From  Michael Greenberg : @Shan: Several SIGPLAN conferences have had virtual, asynchronous PCs. I've only been on the PC, never run one, but they've been good experiences.
13:20:49     From  Shan Lu (SIGOPS) : @Benjamin, we did use HotCRP for all our conference, but that does not offer chatting :’(
13:21:03     From  Benjamin Pierce : No, not synchronous chatting.
13:21:47     From  Shan Lu (SIGOPS) : @Michael, which SIGPLAN conference? I can check with those PC chairs.
13:22:43     From  Stephanie Weirich : @Shan POPL19 had a virtual, asynchronous PC meeting. I'm happy to answer questions.
13:22:48     From  Benjamin Pierce : @Shan: Outside of SIGPLAN, Andrew Myers led a  successful virtual CCS PC meeting.
13:22:57     From  Benjamin Pierce : Also POPL 2020
13:23:05     From  Shan Lu (SIGOPS) : Thanks! I will check with those people through email :D
13:23:10     From  Dave Grove : @Shan, we are in the midst of online, completely asynchronous OOPSLA PC meeting.  I’m the PC chair.  From my perspective it is going well.
13:23:32     From  Benjamin Pierce : (Oh yes, I was forgetting SPLASH :-)
13:23:33     From  Andrew Kun : MobileHCI PC meeting was online. It was smooth.
13:23:48     From  Shan Lu (SIGOPS) : @Dave, @Stephanie, thanks a lot! Will email you for advice! :D
13:23:50     From  Ayman Shamma : CSCW19 (I was TPC) we ran a virtual PC meeting with 130 ACs on a Zoom call.  Took work but went well.
13:23:50     From  Michael Greenberg : @Shan: ICFP2020 was also virtual, I believe.
13:24:00     From  Ashley Cozzi : @Shan: The CHI Conference has run a virtual PC meeting for the last several years.
13:24:28     From  Stephanie Weirich : I think the asynchronous model works well for a PC meeting where the main communication task is evaluation. You want people to take their time in composing what they say.
13:24:44     From  Benjamin Pierce : (It’s a shame that there is — AFAIK — no central place where best practices for virtual PC meetings can be found…)
13:25:23     From  Shan Lu (SIGOPS) : @Benjamin, maybe you can start a google doc and people can chime in there :D
13:25:40     From  Stephanie Weirich : Both POPL18 & POPL19 PC chairs surveyed the PC post meeting specifically about their experiences.
13:25:59     From  Dave Grove : Good point @Ben.   Even if we get back to physical conferences, I think the virtual PC meeting is a permenant change.  People are not going to go back to traveling to PC meetings.
13:27:27     From  Fabiano Pinatti : Never participated in an asynchronous PC, but did in  three synchronous ones  and it always worked out. I can understand the argument in favour of asynchronous, but I guess that there are some questions that would be solved way faster when we’re synchronous…
13:27:47     From  Benjamin Pierce : If I build it, will they come?   https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wNbYHmtSRFkjmost5zstI4HNZvI003AaQdgsy5N2fs8/edit?usp=sharing
13:28:01     From  Benjamin Pierce : @Shan, Dave — there you go!
13:28:02     From  Vinay Setty : For ICTIR we are planning to have a physical component for those who can and are willing to travel. For example, travel within Europe is slowly relaxing.. Would be nice to hear if someone tried something like this and have any recommendations.
13:28:23     From  Shan Lu (SIGOPS) : @Ben :D. I will copy paste some questions and experience there and reorganize later.
13:30:19     From  Benjamin Pierce : @Stephanie and everyone else that has relevant experiences, please join in!
13:33:13     From  Fabrice Rastello  : @Jose What if next year you have to run virtual again (for the hotel contracts)? Postpone to 2022? What about contracts that were (I assume already) made for 2021?
13:38:41     From  Stephanie Weirich : @Benjamin I found some notes I had saved in my records and added a link to them in the google doc.
13:39:21     From  Benjamin Pierce : Great — thanks, Stephanie!  We should also link to Andrew Myers’ PC chair report — do you remember where that is?
13:40:15     From  Stephanie Weirich : @Benjamin I just added a link to Andrew's report in the doc
13:41:32     From  Ali C. Begen : for those who are interested: here is the full report from MMSys.
13:41:34     From  Ali C. Begen : https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_6X3vFtpHhv_Fk_YJRVcKap9ryAW_xBDs_NyG1F2I00/edit?usp=sharing
13:46:06     From  Mario Montagud (i2CAT, UV) : Btw, we also offered the Best Social Media Reporter Award, supported by SIGMM 13:48:59     From  Ali C. Begen : It is tough to organize an event for privacy-aware people :)
13:49:45     From  José Duato : If next year we have to go virtual again, we will cancel the contracts with the conference center and hotels, and will loose the deposit (~$25000). But since we had a significant surplus in 2020 and we still keep the funds from sponsors, ther should be no problem. 13:52:23     From  Ranjit Jhala’s : At a recent mentoring workshop we found that it helps to limit room sizes to ~8 people or so; as that really forces people to spread out a bit (otherwise there is some odd “gravity” at play that pulls everyone into the same room...)
13:53:03     From  Alex Potanin : I am wondering what people think about the idea advocated by Ali both in his talk and on ACM Discord Virtual Conferences forum about trying to fit the conference into a sharp and focussed small 4 hour (or even 3 hour) event every 24 hours (as opposed to the normal 8 hour conference day) so that people do not have to stay up for a long time, but rather find a way to dedicate a 3-4 hour block even if it is in the middle of the night (this meeting is 4am to 7am my local NZ time for example)? It is a 4th alternative not covered by PLDI/ICSE/ICFP 3 examples from the start.
13:53:37     From  Alan Smeaton : @José about your hotel deposit … you should let ACM HQ do the negotiations with the conference hotel on your behalf .. ACM as an entity has a lot more weight than an individual conference and we (SIGMM) have benefited from their negotiating power as a collective representative.
13:55:43     From  devanbu : Ditto. ACM was able help ESEC/FSE get out of our Hotel Contract
13:56:05     From  Ali C. Begen : @Alex, well I am biased here, but I think nobody really is up for following an event 8 hours a day on a computer screen. We get screen fatigue and everybody has a day job, too.
13:56:10     From  Benjamin Pierce : @Alex: I think shorter days can work well with “mirrored schedule” models like the one ICFP will use.
13:56:53     From  Ali C. Begen : In the mirrored schedule, you are dividing the audience based on geography, which is not something I would like.
13:58:42     From  Benjamin Pierce : @Ai: The audience is _already_ divided based on geography!  The question is how best to deal with that fact.
13:59:28     From  Stephanie Weirich : We are hoping that there will still be some crossover with the mirror schedule.
13:59:54     From  Benjamin Pierce : For ICFP, we decided the best compromise was to run essentially two parallel conferences with the same technical material but different communities participating at different times.
14:00:18     From  Ali C. Begen : I think the other way around. Everybody willing to meet/listen to/mingle with their colleagues from other parts of the world, can easily spare a few hours early in the morning or late night, if necessary.
14:00:19     From  Benjamin Pierce : And, as Stephanie says, we did plan some times for joint social sessions across continents.
14:00:24     From  Alex Potanin : (BTW: I didn't mean to suggest that one of the four ways is *better* than the other three, rather I really am interested in what people thought in case there are points that have not been made yet in my discussion with @Benjamin etc. I am looking at this from SPLASH perspective as that is where I am involved and we are very highly parallel with SPLASH.)
14:01:00     From  José Duato : Thanks Alan. I will take your suggestion into account. The conference center is in Spain, and we hired the services of a local company devoted to organize conferences. So, it is a bit more complex. But there should exist some law that allows cancellations without penalty in extraordinary situations.
14:01:02     From  Fabrice Rastello  : As anybody experienced trying to transfer contract with hotel (assuming one can do it hybrid or physical in 2021) to a different sponsor (CGO is co-sponsored)?
14:01:36     From  Benjamin Pierce : @Alex: I agree that 7 or 8 hours is long days and shorter is better if you can cram everything you want to do into a shorter schedule.
14:02:38     From  Stephanie Weirich : @Ali  Our thoughts when planning the ICFP schedule https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WPVfCwITsWzShQ8yukDA5We9jgrKzehXfS5a05CD8Jo/edit?usp=sharing
14:04:01     From  José Duato : ISCA is also co-sponsored (ACM and IEEE). We reached an agreement with ACM and IEEE: ISCA 2021 will be again sponsored by IEEE. But ACM will also sponsor the conference two consecutive years: 2022 and 2023.
14:07:07     From  José Duato : Regarding the schedule, I agree on shorter schedules for virtual format. We addressed this issue by enabling access to papers and pre-recorded videos one week in advance. This way, sessions could be shortened. And people could watch those videos when it was most convenient for them.
14:07:28     From  Donna Cappo : For ISCA -  IEEE will take the administrative lead for 21 and ACM for 22 and 23.  IEEE is prepared to take the lead with the facility for 21.
14:08:09     From  Brusilovsky, Peter Leonid : QOALA was engaged at UMAP, but has not been used much. It seems to be past generation - focused on mobile app to support a real event. Using it for a virtual conference on a large screen just reminded how many things are missing and could be added. For example, recommendations. What has happed with Confer by Dave Karger that was used in the pas - it did have recommendations?
14:09:42     From  Vinay Setty : @Ben, FYI ICTIR is in September not October
14:10:17     From  Ali C. Begen : @Stephanie, thanks for the doc. Looks like you covered the issues well. As long as the trade-offs are clear, I am sure every organizer will give the best decision.
14:10:26     From  Ayman Shamma : We can pull up the usage stats on the SIGCHI QOALA PWA…it’s getting use and driving a good 40% of the traffic to the videos in general.
14:11:24     From  Ayman Shamma : Confer (which David runs from MIT) actually pulls from the QOALA API - I’m looking to getting his recs into our web app more formally…but that was delayed because of this virtualization
14:12:30     From  Crista Lopes : Slack is available in China, I think. Discord is not
14:12:47     From  Ali C. Begen : Slack works there (I was told)
14:12:50     From  Ayman Shamma : We’d like some play listing in the ACM DL for videos….which would help.
14:13:05     From  Shan Lu (SIGOPS) : ICSE had very good experience of putting videos on China’s video platform, instead of youtube, I think.
14:13:25     From  Crista Lopes : yes, @Shan, we livetreamed both to YouTube and iQIYI
14:13:33     From  Jonathan Bell : ICSE posted to both a platform in China (IQIYI) and YouTube
14:15:50     From  Alex Potanin : That's an excellent point. We are effectively asking Student Volunteers to do a lot of the work that in the past came with a perk of travelling to a new place and enjoying the location. Now we're asking them to do it from their homes with nothing much in return and we need more of SV's than ever before which seems very much unfair. Hmm...
14:17:30     From  Brusilovsky, Peter Leonid : At Hypertext 2020 we piloted a fair access initiative to increase our inclusion - this was free access to researchers and students from underrepresented regions. It was supported by the same share of money usually allocated for travel. Any similar experiences?
14:18:12     From  Alex Potanin : E.g. being SV when it saves you $300-$600 registration fee is one thing, but being SV when it saves you $15 student registration fee is very much different.
14:20:01     From  Ali C. Begen : should we raise hands for commenting on Crista’s questions?
14:20:17     From  Benjamin Pierce : Yes, please use hand raise
14:20:57     From  Fabrice Rastello  : Should we provide free registration for one year to *all* ACM virtual conferences?
14:21:38     From  Christian Riess : @Fabrice: uh, we also have expenses involved with the conferences...
14:21:42     From  José Duato : I bought a top-model Apple laptop for each of the two students who helped me a lot.
14:22:14     From  Benjamin Pierce : And the SIGs have their own expenses
14:22:32     From  Alex Potanin : @Jose paid from the conference budget? Then the fees have to go back up to $600+ for virtual conferences - like if one has paid volunteers. :)
14:24:03     From  Fabrice Rastello  : @christian I am not saying we should make the virtual conferences free for everybody. I believe we can afford having those students attend for free. This is a great opportunity to have them attend conferences they would not attend otherwise...
14:24:09     From  Jason Hartline (SIGecom) : At SIGecom we had public pre-recording sessions for authors stretched out over two weeks, a few sessions a day.  it was nice and relaxing.  then we played the talks back in a 3-day conference.  So, people could have it spread over 2 weeks or they could have it all in 3 days.  It worked great.
14:24:48     From  Christian Riess : @Fabrice thanks for the clarification, yes, I like your idea
14:25:47     From  Ali C. Begen : unfortunately no single tool is good at everything.
14:26:12     From  Fabrice Rastello  : ++ For a summary with feedback on each different tool  
14:28:26     From  Benjamin Pierce : There is an appendix in the Task Force report with information and comments on a whole bunch of different tools.  Please add to it!!
14:29:37     From  John Kim : Is Clowdr free to use?
14:29:47     From  Jason Hartline (SIGecom) : it’s open source.
14:29:58     From  José Duato : No, I did not pay the laptops from the conference budget. I have collaborations with industry and have a lot of flexibility when using that money (as long as I deliver the expected results)
14:30:15     From  Raja Kushalnagar : Does Clowdr support real-time captions or transcripts?
14:31:40     From  Benjamin Pierce : @John: Yes, Clowdr is free and open source
14:31:54     From  John Kim : Thank you for the clarification. ;)
14:32:27     From  José Duato : Anyway, if I had to pay the two laptops from the conference budget, that would only have increased the fees by $3.5 per attendee. Not too much. 
14:33:09     From  Benjamin Pierce : @Raja: Clowdr itself doesn’t support captioning, but it is possible to use a captioning service as part of the pipeline that generates the content people see in presentations.  (Hallway track conversations would be harder.)
14:34:02     From  Alex Potanin : @Jose: yes, so this is an important point. We need to consider budgeting to pay our SV's in some way as they don't have much incentive in a virtual conference world I suspect. That's all.
14:36:41     From  Ayman Shamma : How complex is clowdr to set up and admin? And can I use it without logging in?
14:36:58     From  Fabrice Rastello  : @Benjamin Now found it (not in the appendix but separate doc -- link provided in Sec 3). Thanks!!!!!
14:37:32     From  Shan Lu (SIGOPS) : Thank you @Jonathan, @Crista and all. Tha sounds like a lot of work in building Clowdr. Thanks!
14:37:45     From  Brusilovsky, Peter Leonid : Clowdr looks like a nice step into the right direction! Hope that papers with some analysis of logs and user feedback are coming!
14:37:50     From  Mario Montagud (i2CAT, UV) : Sorry, I have to leave. Thanks for organizing this very useful and relevant call! Take care! :)
14:38:25     From  Benjamin Pierce : Here is the direct link to the summary of information about tools and platforms:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LLLniPkf48CCZyG_BNy1ylF2wXNlztqNEOnzNuMQmJc/edit?ts=5f12cdb9
14:38:59     From  Brusilovsky, Peter Leonid : Thanks!
14:39:03     From  Jonathan Bell : @Ayama - We have it designed so that we can handle most of the hosting at low cost (you pay Twilio directly < $0.01/minute/person for video services used). It’s designed to be integrated with conf.researchr.org for importing and managing the program (and should be extremely easy to set up if you use conf.researchr.org)
14:39:28     From  Jonathan Bell : (Sorry for typo in your name, and *shakes fist* at inability to edit messages in zoom chat)
14:40:09     From  Ayman Shamma : Np. :-) When someone handed clowdr to me it was the GitHub page, which is not inviting to a conf organizers.
14:40:48     From  Eelco Herder : In my experience, people did not join during breaks, because they needed the time for brewing coffee or tea, cooking dinner, interacting with the family, getting away from the computer, ....
14:41:09     From  Jonathan Bell : We are not quite at the point where we want to have a “Click here to run Clowdr for your conference” button (and we automatically make it happen), but if you are interested please email us. VL/HCC will be using Clowdr this August, and our hope is that they will need minimal support from us - it will be clearer after that how easy it is to be used by organizers besides ourselves.
14:41:25     From  Ali C. Begen : Frankly speaking, online social events are overrated.
14:42:42     From  Ali C. Begen : Eventually as the physical conferences became dull, sooner or later the virtual events will become dull as well. Soon, our goal will be to make these events least painful and with the largest ROI for time spent.
14:48:15     From  Rodrigo Fonseca : How did the Q&A work on gather? 
14:48:40     From  Yannai Gonczarowski (SIGecom / EC) : Textual on the 2-minute breaks between talks, at the poster later for the more serious interactive Q&A
14:54:29     From  Ayman Shamma : (Sidenote: we use PCS to collect presenter preferences and videos so its nice to see another tool also doing that arduous collection)
14:54:46     From  Jason Hartline (SIGecom) : +1
14:55:52     From  Ayman Shamma : Do we have a good sense on what tools are WCAG 2.1 compliant?
14:55:58     From  devanbu : Is there a more complete demo of the ICFP system archived anywhere
14:56:15     From  Brusilovsky, Peter Leonid : Excellent attempt to help organizers in scheduling! You might want to check some ideas from MIT Confer - A. Bhardwaj, J. Kim, S. Dow, D. Karger, S. Madden, R. Miller and H. Zhang, 2014. Attendee-Sourcing: Exploring The Design Space of Community-Informed Conference Scheduling. Second AAAI Conference on Human Computation and Crowdsourcing.
14:56:17     From  devanbu : Also of the EC system? (Gather.town)
14:57:09     From  Brusilovsky, Peter Leonid : Does Clowdr provides organizers’ support?
14:57:39     From  Ayman Shamma : I’m a big fan of Confer’s recs https://confer.csail.mit.edu/
14:58:12     From  Jonathan Bell : @Peter - We do not offer paid support. However, we are happy to help develop features so organizers can be fully self-sufficient.
14:58:52     From  Brusilovsky, Peter Leonid : Sorry,  I meant help in scheduling like Confer and Adam’s system?
14:59:04     From  Benjamin Pierce : Everyone is welcome to continue the conversation on the Discourse chat on virtual conferences