Details about IEEE Vis 2020 for Class
As part of class, you are required to “attend” some of IEEE Vis2020 (VisWeek). This posting explains what you need to do for class, and provides some advice on how to find things at the conference.
A warning: this is the first virtual IEEE Vis conference. It’s all an experiment. I think they are figuring things out as they go. My advice is based on older conferences.
The virtual conference thing is an experiment. It is an experiment for the conference. It is an experiment for this class. I have no idea how well it will work out. But I think it’s an exciting opportunity. Even if you never look at visualization work again, learning about online conferences and presentations will be useful.
What to do…
Make Sure you have registered! You can’t use the virtual conference site if you haven’t registered!
Do Some Planning - The best tool for this is to look at the schedule - it shows you what sessions are when. The green bars are the full papers sessions (the primary venue of the conference) - you need to attend at least some of those. Look for things that look interesting. I strongly recommend the Best Papers Session, the Keynote and the Capstone. You might also be interested in the tutorials.
Be careful about time zones! The website seems to do conversions automatically. But check.
If you go to the page for a session (for example the best papers, or a session during class time on Multi-Dimensional Data) you will see a list of the papers, but you will also see (at the bottom) the fast forwards videos - a set of 30 second videos (one per paper) that “advertises the papers”. I highly recommend watching some fast forwards to see what the topics of the papers are. One handy thing: the session page has a feature to add it to your calendar (convenient if you use Outlook or Google Calendar).
You may also look at the Papers Page to see all the papers. This page includes everything (the “full papers”, the workshop papers, the short papers, …). It can be overwhelming. But, it is a good way to get a sense of what all the papers are. (which is something you will be asked about in the discussion).
This is a page of all the Full Papers Sessions which might be more convenient than the schedule.
From either the Papers page or a Session page, you can get to a paper’s page, which has the abstract of the paper, the fast forward, as well as a link to the paper itself. For example, here is a link to our paper.
Watching some fast-forwards is required - you’ll be asked about them in the discussion.
Online Discussion 09: Vis Week (due Tue, Oct 27) will ask you about your impression of the program overall, and fast forwards.
Attend Some Events Live - you are required to attend some events live. At least 2 paper talks, and a total of 2 hours minimum of content during the week. If nothing else, you can attend during class time (the times that you be spending watching a video stream anyway).
Online Discussion 09: Vis Week (due Tue, Oct 27) will ask you about two paper presentations that you watched. Part of the idea is for you to get an appreciation of the presentations (independent of the content).
I believe that many of the events will be watchable after they happen (the streams are recorded for later viewing). This is great if you miss something - or if you hear about something great that you missed. (see below). However, you must watch at least some things live.
Attend More - 2 hours of live events is the minimum. You should attend more things that are of interest to you. I have purposefully not assigned other work for class because I want you to take time to check out the conference.
Discuss - The standard online discussions, Online Discussion 09: Vis Week (due Tue, Oct 27) and Seek and Find 09: Virtual Vis Week (due Fri, Oct 30), will give you some opportunity for discussion. However, you can do more.
If you see something great, or want to talk about a presentation you saw, make a posting on Piazza. Put the title of the presentation in the title, and preferably a link to the page where someone else can watch it. Check to see if someone else has already posted about it.
In the follow-up discussion you can discuss specific presentations. Note: there are enough presentations that it isn’t clear if everyone will watch the same ones. But if you make a recommendation, that might inspire others to watch, and then you’ll have people to discuss it with.