Code of Conduct and Zoom 101

Code of conduct:

• Participants will conduct themselves in a professional manner that is welcoming, inclusive, and free from any form of disrespect, intimidation, bullying, discrimination, harassment, and retaliation.

• Participants will treat each other with civility and respect to create a collegial and professional environment where all voices and perspectives can be heard irrespective of biases, known and unknown. Creating a supportive environment is the responsibility of all participants.

• Participants will avoid taking inappropriate actions or making statements based on characteristics such as age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, nationality, political affiliation, ability status, educational background, occupation, seniority or any other characteristic protected by law.

• If a participant observes inappropriate comments or actions, intervention is appropriate if it respects all parties. Violations of the code of conduct may be reported to the SOC members listed on the Home page of this website, who will all be identified as co-hosts on the Zoom call.

For everyone, please...

• your screen name should be your full name followed by your institution in brackets, e.g. "Mae Carol Jemison (NASA)"

• switch off your video to save bandwidth

• keep your microphone on mute to minimize background noise

• make use of the chat & participants menu

Speakers will miss the visual feedback. In the chat & participants menu you can make up for that, by leaving nice remarks, using thumbs-up emojis, raising your hand, and clapping after the talks

• only ask talk Q&A questions by

  • either using the "raise hand" button in the participants menu

  • or writing them down in the Google Doc we will circulate

Post your questions below the talk title. To second someone else’s question, add a “+” symbol after the question. Feel free to leave questions with your name (in which case we might ask you to read them out) or anonymously

• after each talk Q&A, we encourage you to continue conversations with speakers either in the Zoom chat or or in separate forums.

For presenters, please...

• make sure your slides are uploaded in advance; use PDF if possible

• if you already submitted keynote/powerpoint, please additionally submit a PDF version as a backup

• the presenting mode might cut off the edges of your slides; leave a safety margin to ensure text and figure axes remain visible

• we will have two plans*:

  • plan A: we give you screen share access and you share the slides on your screen directly.

If possible, practice this feature in your own Zoom room ahead of your talk! At the bottom of the Zoom window, you’ll have a menu with a green “share” button (Fig. 1 below). Note that you may not be able to see your presenter notes while sharing the presentation (unless you have two screens).

• • plan B: if something goes wrong with your screen sharing, we will share the backup PDF version of your slides for you.

We will progress the slide every time you say "next" or something similar. We appreciate that this is not ideal, but it will be the quickest way to move on and minimize disruption.

• while you are speaking, please switch on your video. It is nice if the audience can see you to get visual cues!

• for the 5 min slots (3 min speaking, 1 min questions, 1 min transition), your session chair will give an audible clue when you have 1 minute of speaking time left.

• for the 20 min slots (15 min speaking, 4 min questions, 1 min transition), your session chair will give an audible clue when you have 2 minutes of speaking time left.

• if you exceed all your time (including question time), your session chair might need to mute you.

• for the talk Q&A, your session chair will monitor raised hands and the Google Doc, and unmute people or read out questions.

• after your talk, feel free to continue conversations in the Zoom chat or in separate forums. We encourage interaction!

* We did extensive testing and generally plan A works well and presenters as well as audiences can see the mouse courser as pointers. However, unfortunately with Zoom everything is platform dependent. On different Windows/Mac/Linux versions or for unstable internet connections the behavior can be sub-optimal and features can be missing. In these cases, we might need to switch to Plan B for some talks

Informal lunch chat:

• We will aim for general conversations among all participants in our virtual lunch, as well as to set aside time to split up into random break-out rooms of 5 people (maximum)

For Happy Hour board gamers, please...

• create free accounts at Tabletopia (browser-based) and Jackboxgames (browser-based), and familiarize yourself with those platforms

• additional options could be Cardzmania (browser-based), Catan (requires installation) and Pokerstars (requires installation)

• or suggest your own favorite and free virtual board game platform

• after the conference we will ask for "board game leaders" to suggest their favorite platform and games, and then split up in breakout zoom rooms for each game

Fig. 1: Sharing your presenter screen in Zoom