Notes on organizing a virtual workshop
For circulation.
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The two time zones to watch out for are West-coast US and East
Asia. Things occurring around 2PM UTC are normally the most doable
(7AM in LA, 11PM tokyo). Not perfect, but no one is pushing past
midnight or having to wake up before 6AM.
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Splitting a workshop over multiple days can be beneficial. Virtual
calls can be exhausted if run over multiple hours, and may not work
with everyone's schedules. If there are conflicts in what time to
choose, splitting over multiple days can find compromise (i.e.,
day 1 can be good for group X, while day 2
can be good for group Y).
Keep in mind where authors of papers are based. They should be
given priority for giving their talk at a reasonable hour.
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We've asked our accepted paper authors to prepare a video of their
presentation. Links to these videos will be sent to all registered
workshop attendees, as well as a few mailing lists, a couple of
weeks before the workshop occurs. Attendees are expected to watch
these videos before attending the workshop. No presentations will
occur during the workshop virtual meetings, these time slots are for
discussion only.
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Conferences are providing Zoom software licenses that allow large
numbers of attendees. Large Zoom calls are a bit tricky to
handle. You need to outline procedures for how people can be unmuted
to ask questions, etc. It's definitely worthwhile getting familiar
with the technology if you intend on chairing the meeting.
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Conferences may be willing to allow for an "open-access"
workshop. We have found that in this current environment,
conferences are willing to allow non-registered persons to attend
conference workshops. Though virtual workshops are not perfect,
we're using this as an opportunity to try and get more attendees
(it's free to join, you don't even need to leave your home!). We've
had a lot of positive feedback from those who, one way or another,
cannot normally afford to attend such workshops, as well as many
from industry who can't take the time off work to attend
physically. Once you get your times sorted, and a Zoom link ready,
you can start posting to mailing lists etc. about your free online
workshop :).
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Given that everything is going virtual, we've found researchers are
more willing to give remote presentations of their work to research
groups. We've invited a few researchers to give talks to our group
via Zoom as part of our weekly reading group. People are more
willing to do these things now. Online workshops are a good virtual
meeting meeting space for fostering these kinds of arrangements.
Notes from EuroGP 2020
First distributed by email
April 2020?
Web page created 11 May 2020.