VIRTUAL CONFERENCE (July 6, 2020)

Considering the current and prospective situation due to COVID-19, the organizing committee has decided to go for a FULL VIRTUAL/ONLINE CONFERENCE. It has been a difficult decision for us given the big effort we have done with great enthusiasm, but we think this is the best and most convenient decision considering the evolution of the pandemic, the heterogeneous travel restrictions in different countries, and the uncertainties for the following months.

Therefore, in the light of this decision, we want to share with you our current actions and plans for the conference. Please read carefully and in case you have questions please send us an email to iwsds2020@gmail.com.

PROCEEDINGS:

We are currently finishing the conference proceedings which will be published by Springer as part of the LNEE series. Our hope is that it will be ready by the conference time or the following months before the end of the year. Since you already provided all the copyright forms and source files, we do not need any action from your side, unless the Springer editors require it later.

CONFERENCE PRESENTATION:

1- Requirement: The corresponding author of each accepted paper must send:

• • • A video corresponding to the presentation of the paper (see duration below).

    • The presentation slides (PPTX or PDF).

    • A signed consent form to publish them.

The video will be uploaded in a streaming platform (e.g. Youtube) accessible through a hidden link that we will sent later to all authors, while the slides will be fully public through our website (https://www.iwsds.tech/accepted-papers).

2- Consent to publish: We need to get your consent and preferred way to publish the video and slides (either as public or private) using this form.

3- Video guidelines: The duration of the video will depend on the length of the submitted paper (with independency of being in the General track or a special session track). The video must be recorded in MP4 format. The author of the video is responsible for granting a good video, sound quality, illumination, proper selection of background, and presentation. The conference organizers keep the right to publish or not a video/slides that do not fit the purpose or quality required for the conference. Next, we provide some suggested duration:

• • • a. Demo and position papers: 5-10 minutes

    • b. Short paper: 10-20 minutes

    • c. Long paper: 15-30 minutes

4- Deadline: The deadline for sending us the video, slides and signed permission form is due on September 6, 2020. You can directly send the files or link to download them to iwsds2020@gmail.com.

5- Q&A: The video and slides will be available to all registered participants and their co-authors one week in advance to the official conference dates. The purpose is that all participants may have time to watch the videos at their own pace. We will enable the comments section in the streaming platform in case they want to leave any question or comment to the authors. Then, during the official conference dates (21-23 Sept, 2020), we require that any of the paper’s authors go through the comments section and provide answers to those questions. In any case, we are considering to program some live sessions to have a more interactive conference. We will be giving more information along time.

AWARDS:

Thanks to our gold sponsors and endorsing institutions, the organizers will give one award to the best paper sent to the conference. In addition, we will also give one award to the best video presentation. The winners will be announced during the conference official dates and clearly indicated in our website. Both winners will receive a monetary prize and certificate. Note: The best video winner will be requested to grant public permission in case it has not be initially granted.

KEYNOTES AND OTHER EVENTS:

We have already got acknowledgement from our three keynote speakers that they will provide a video and slides of their talks. The videos and slides will be available to all registered participants; besides, they will be answering to questions posted in the comments section of the online stream platform during the time of the conference similarly as for the regular papers .

At the moment, we are also considering having some general assembly using Zoom during the days of the conference at a convenient time for everyone given the time zones. Therefore, keep in touch since we will provide you with more information about this in September.

REIMBURSEMENT (ONLY FOR ALREADY REGISTERED CORRESPONDING AUTHORS)

As stated in our website, since we did not have a full physical conference, we are committed to do a Full refund of the registration payment less bank or credit card expenses and 100€ processing fee. The reimbursement process will be started around November once the conference finishes. By that time, we will contact you on how to proceed to get the refund done.

FOR NON-REGISTERED PARTICIPANTS (NON-CORRESPONDING AUTHORS):

Given the differences in time-zones that our authors and attendees have, we decided to ask authors to submit videos and presentations that will be available to all registered participants and watched with one week in advance to the conference dates (21-23, 2020) allowing to send questions and make comments.

For people who has not registered before (including co-authors), in order to get access to the videos and presentations, we are requesting to do a free registration using this Registration link. Although the registration is free, it is important to do it for management purposes and for distributing information along time. The registration deadline is due on September 13, 2020.

We want to finish this communicate, by saying that we are really sorry for not being able to welcome you in person in Madrid, but hopefully we will soon have the opportunity to meet in person again. Meanwhile, stay safe and keep healthy.

With our kind regards,

IWSDS2020 Organizing Committee