Participants
Elected Members
Ex Officio Members
Updates:
1) Online conference 2020
- No physical conference possible in 2020 because of corona crisis; a ‘virtual’ conference will take place instead, to continue as a community.
- A platform will be chosen; participants can log in with a password.
Track chairs will have a critical role to coordinate their specific track online, so they need to become involved soon.
- Because of the time zones, the presentations – probably 1 slide + 4 minutes presentation - will be asynchronous (recorded and uploaded) and participants are allowed to give written feedback, not just on the presentation but also on the paper/extended abstract. So the discussion will be asynchronous.
Keynotes can be recorded and made available.
- Question: will we also allow some forms of synchronous interaction? E.g. Q&A in real time?
- Comment Andrew: ‘It depends on what we're trying to achieve. Are we only doing a formal program or trying to do a more social part as well?’
- Suggestion Wilhelm: ‘I think we should embrace a fully digital conference in this situation. Not an attempt to replicate / simulate a normal conference online. To cater to people being in different time zones etc. I would be in favour of recorded videos for speakers as well as primarily text-based discussions + voluntary conference calls for discussion if people want to. Why not have everyone upload their talks whenever they want to, and people can pick and choose what to watch and what to discuss about?’
- Length of the conference: Mario suggests spreading it over 1 month. A number of people (a.o. Katleen, Marty, Alexis, Gosha) think this is too long and prefer 1 week, preferably in the week of the original conference (16-19 June).
- Participants should get the option to withdraw their paper from the 2020 conference; this has to be communicated as soon as more details of the virtual conference are known. They also need to communicate whether they want to participate in the online conference.
- IMPORTANT: We will have to think profoundly about how to organize the online conference, because one cannot simply transplant a physical conference with +100 papers to an online environment. This will require huge efforts, so please provide input and suggestions (e.g. good formats) to the conference directors and programme committee. Andrew and Gosha (experience with Canvas and Discord) will send their ideas to Mario.
You are all invited to look for examples of good and bad practices and to talk to people who have experience with this and to share this with Mario. (See also below, timeline)
2) Proceedings and book series
The publication of the proceedings and ETHICOMP book series will continue as planned, both with ISBN. This is not a peer reviewed publication, but the acceptance of the extended abstracts was based on a double-blind peer review.
3) Refunds
The organizing committee has made some investments, so a full refund might not be possible. Don suggests giving participants the option to donate their registration fee.
For instance, participants who already registered might be offered with these options:
-full refund (note: if this is possible, given the costs of the online platforms, EasyChair, …)
-partial refund
-donate the registration fee to the organization of the virtual conference
4) Conference 2021
The suggestion is that the 2021 conference will take place in Spain. This will also allow participants to use their flight and hotel vouchers from 2020.
Turku will be the location of the 2022 conference; Mario and Kai have discussed this. addition: or Spring 2023, this needs to be discussed, because ETHICOMP takes place every 18 months.
We will have to decide on the set-up (e.g. dates; call for papers; …) later.
4) Inform + involve the community
The ETHICOMP community has to be informed as soon as possible, preferably this week. More updates will follow later.
Suggestion for email – feedback welcome!
Dear Madam, dear Sir,
Due to the coronavirus, the programme committee and conference directors unfortunately had to decide that there will be no physical ETHICOMP conference in June. We are working hard to make a transition to an online conference; more updates will follow at the end of April – early May. We very much encourage you to send us your ideas, suggestions, and experiences with online conferences.
Concerning refunds of the conference registrations: please note that we are working on it, more details will be communicated later.
Many thanks for your understanding.
Best wishes,
5) Track chairs
Need to be send additional emails, given their critical role in the online conference
6) Timeline
- this week (8 April), conference directors: send out email to the ETHICOMP community
- Steering Committee, before 22 April: please send suggestions to Mario about the organization of an online conference (good and bad practices)
- Mario, before 29 April: he will send the proposal of the online conference to the SC
- Steering Committee, 29 April, 2 pm Brussels time: our next ETHICOMP SC meeting takes place. During this meeting, we will discuss Mario’s proposal.
If you have comments on these minutes, please send them to Katleen.