Holding a Conference Online and Live due to COVID-19

Angela Bonifati; Giovanna Guerrini; Carsten Lutz; Wim Martens; Lara Mazilu; Norman Paton; Marcos Antonio Vaz Salles; Marc H. Scholl; Yongluan Zhou

arXiv · 2004.07668

Holding a Conference Online and Live due to COVID-19

Angela Bonifati·Giovanna Guerrini·Carsten Lutz·Wim Martens·Lara Mazilu·Norman Paton·Marcos Antonio Vaz Salles·Marc H. Scholl·Yongluan Zhou

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Abstract

The joint EDBT/ICDT conference (International Conference on Extending Database Technology/International Conference on Database Theory) is a well established conference series on data management, with annual meetings in the second half of March that attract 250 to 300 delegates. Three weeks before EDBT/ICDT 2020 was planned to take place in Copenhagen, the rapidly developing Covid-19 pandemic led to the decision to cancel the face-to-face event. In the interest of the research community, it was decided to move the conference online while trying to preserve as much of the real-life experience as possible. As far as we know, we are one of the first conferences that moved to a fully synchronous online experience due to the COVID-19 outbreak. With fully synchronous, we mean that participants jointly listened to presentations, had live Q&A, and attended other live events associated with the conference. In this report, we share our decisions, experiences, and lessons learned.

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Angela Bonifati, Giovanna Guerrini, Carsten Lutz, Wim Martens, Lara Mazilu, Norman Paton, Marcos Antonio Vaz Salles, Marc H. Scholl, Yongluan Zhou. 2020-04-16. Holding a Conference Online and Live due to COVID-19. https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.07668

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