Guide for Presenters

This year, SPLASH is going to be accommodating both “virtual” attendees (from different time zones, joining at their own pace remotely) and “physical” attendees who will be present in Chicago during the conference. We will do our best effort to accommodate both hopefully without compromising the experience of each.

Please note that both physical and virtual presenters are expected to pre-record their talk, manually add subtitles, and submit the video of their talk by the 1st of October 2021.

Please note that ALL attendees are required to be fully vaccinated to attend SPLASH 2021 in-person. Masks are required at SPLASH 2021.

The difference between the virtual and physical presenters is that physical presenters are allowed to give their talk live during the main Chicago time band, while the video of their talk will be played in the “offset time band”. Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties, we are unable to provide a live recording and replay of the video of the live talk.

This year we hope to schedule the sessions as a sequence of 4 15-minute talks followed by a 20-minute Q&A that involves at least one author from each of the 4 papers in the session. Remote attendees will post questions to the Discord Channel for the event, in a thread that will be created for the paper. Physical attendees can post questions in Discord or can walk up to the standing mic and ask a question verbally. The session chair will be responsible for asking the questions from Discord out loud and interspersing them with live questions; in the case of live questions, the session chair must make sure those asking questions use a microphone so remote attendees can hear them. The virtual authors are welcome to answer questions live by joining a Zoom room; the link should be in the Discord channel for the event. We highly recommend that all the attendees install and use Discord App rather than using a web browser-based version.

Virtual Presenters

We expect every author who is not going to be present physically in Chicago to pre-record their talk and submit a video. We will provide the instructions shortly and will expect the videos to be due around 1st of October 2021.

We expect at least one of the authors to be present at both the “Chicago time zone” slot for their paper and the “offset time band” slot for their paper to be ready to answer questions from the audience (if any) and discuss their paper.

SPLASH will be available as three main live video streams for each of the three main rooms (Zurich D, B, and C) with a Discord Server available for any questions to be asked during the live Q&A. Questions will be asked in Discord, and authors and session chairs will connect to a Zoom room (the Zoom link is available in the Discord channel for the event). The session chair will select questions from Discord and ask them verbally in the Zoom room, and the author will answer them verbally there. The Zoom room will be broadcast over YouTube during the Q&A period, so that the audience can hear the questions and answers.

Additional workshop streams in rooms Zurich E, F, and G will run a more low key ad hoc “Zoom Room” that the virtual attendees are welcome to join. We encourage all virtual attendees to tune in during either “main Chicago time band” so that their questions can be voiced to the live audience or in the “offset time band” where the authors will do their best to be present on Discord for the Q&A following their paper “mirror slot”.

Physical Presenters

As is usual for the physical conference, the main event takes place between 9am and 5pm Chicago time in the Swissotel main venue. You are going to be able to view the main three streams in the Zurich A, B, and C rooms and the additional workshop streams in Zurich D, E, and F rooms.

We expect all presenters physically in Chicago to attend their talk as usual and give a live talk, though if they prefer they are welcome to choose the video prerecorded option. In both cases we require the authors to submit a video of their talk to be played during the “offset time band” for virtual attendees.

One of the authors will have to arrange to be present for the Q&A during the “offset time band” which may mean that they will be away for the 20 minutes of the Q&A for their paper and may miss out on the physical social event for those 20 minutes or they may ask a co-author who is not present physically to do the Q&A for the paper instead.

The only difference is that we will expect all the questions to be posted on Discord using either your phones or laptops for the session chair to manage and voice the Q&A during the actual talks.

Physical attendees will be able to enjoy some of the talks being delivered live by the authors who are physically present and some shown as pre-recorded videos in a “cinema-style” arrangement for those authors who are unable to travel to Chicago but will be present “virtually” to answer your questions.

There are going to be physical attendees-only social events and receptions that we won’t be able to accommodate virtual attendees in, who, in turn, will have virtual-only social events designed just for them.