JuliaCon 2020 Update

Announcements
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Following on from our earlier announcement about going virtual, here are some updates about the new format.

JuliaCon is a rather large conference (by number of talks) and so running it online is not trivial. We do want to keep a similar amount of content as before, or more – the submitted talks this year are pretty good.

So the conference will run primarily on 29/30/31 of July this year, Wednesday to Friday. All talks will be scheduled during these days, between 12:30pm UTC to 7:30pm UTC. Of this, 2pm to 5pm UTC will be considered core hours.

To reduce AV and internet problems, most talks will be pre-recorded, with a few (such as keynotes) delivered live. However, all talks, including pre-recorded ones, will be released on a schedule on the conference days. During, and after, the talk, the presenters will be available for Q&A using some online chat/meeting tool. Birds of Feather sessions will also take place over a similar platform. We will run training sessions prior to the conference on how to record a talk successfully. And there will be a deadline for uploading recorded talks, so please adhere to that if you are a speaker.

Workshops will be held in the week prior to the main conference. They will be spread out over many days, so you can attend as many as you want. They will be delivered live. We’re still discussing the mechanics and the tooling, so once again, watch this space.

Tickets will be free for this year, but registration is required to access the conference platform. If you have already purchased tickets, you can ask for refunds using the Eventbrite link. We expect a large volume of requests, so please be patient – but refunds will absolutely be made if you ask for it.

As you expect, the loss of ticket revenue is a big hit to the project. While costs are down, so are sponsorships. We also use the income from JuliaCon to fund ongoing project costs, such as JSoC, hackathons and CI services. All of which are at risk for next year. So if you can, please consider donating to the project. You can donate using github or directly. Funds are held at NumFOCUS and used for the benefit of the Julia open source community. It’ll also help, if you can, to roll over already purchased tickets to next year, or convert it to a donation.

Finally, running a virtual conference seems to need more volunteer effort than physical, so if you can, please offer to help by filling in this form

I’ve been in the habit of ending JuliaCon emails by saying “see you in Lisbon”. So while we’re trying to ensure that we can say this in 2021, for now, stay safe everyone, and see you in cyberspace!

Regards

Avik (on behalf of the JuliaCon 2020 organising committee)

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Is the NumFOCUS julia swag store still the official way to get Julia merchandise?
If yes, do the proceeds go to Julia computing?
Maybe that is an additional way for people to support JuliaCon?

Cheers,
Modatu

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Yes, purchasing swag from that store sends a small amount of money to the project. (Although a better link might be: JuliaLang)

It’s a very small percentage, but every little helps. We’ll have some JuliaCon themed swag in there soon.

However, I should probably clarify, for the record, that all proceeds go to NumFOCUS for use in the Julia opensource community. Julia Computing is a commercial entity, that does not recieve any money from open source income, either JuliaCon, or any other donation mechanism. It’s quite separate. You probably meant that, but I did not want any confusion to arise in the future.

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Avik, thankyou for sending this out. A great idea to pre-record the talks, eyt gather everyone together for live keynotes.

And Julia swag!
I still say we need a pet animal though - or three Tribbles in various colours.

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It’s only a minor thing, but the Firefox browser bar still has “JuliaCon 2020, Lisbon, Portugal” as the page name/title for the JuliaCon website. It might be good to change that to avoid confusion.

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If no refund is requested, will my ticket purchase automatically be used as a donation?

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Does some of it go to Eventbrite in that case, whereas a donation might go 100% to helping fund JuliaCon expenses?

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Thanks @aviks and the rest of the team for all your hard work adapting Juliacon.

A small question about refunds: I can’t see the refund button on Eventbrite. I just see something like this. Anyone else having this difficulty?

Nevermind, I see the button now, after logging in from a different email. Apparently Eventbrite isn’t good with sending receipts to one email and tickets to another.

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I think we’ll be conservative and default to accounting for the unused tickets for roll over to next year. If you wish for us to use the funds immediately as a donation, it’s probably best to email juliacon@julialang.org.

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Doesn’t matter all that much, we’ll pay for credit card processing charges in any case. Unless you want to mail a check!

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I’ll definitely make some donation - what is the best way to do so, so that it all goes to JuliaCon, and not some of it to some bank?
(You know I’m a huge fan of JuliaCon, and all the people who support it, give talks, etc! )

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Can we use this email for donation to the conference via Paypal?

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so that it all goes to JuliaCon, and not some of it to some bank?

In that case, the easiest might be to mail in a check to NumFOCUS, with a covering letter mentioning Julia. Address is at the bottom of the homepage

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Can we use this email for donation to the conference via Paypal?

Not that email, but treasurer@numfocus.org will find it’s way. Mention Julia somewhere in the memo.

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Surely there must be a more agile way for people around the world to donate to an online project than to mail a check?

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Online donation:

You can specify the organization you want. Which organization should people specify?

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The link to donate online was in my original message: Donate to Julia – this will mark the donation for the Julia project.

I mentioned checks since Scott was concerned about bank fees. As I said originally, the best way to donate to the project is via Github or the numfocus donate page.

[Edit] I’ve now quoted Scott’s question in my respose to make this more obvious.

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Ah sorry, apologies.

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GitHub also covers 100% of the fees for sponsorships so if you do the transaction through there, you can rest assured 100% of the money gets where it’s supposed to go.

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@avik, when confirming attendance, it brings up a table where one can indicate the hours when one is available for giving the talk. When this was set up it obviously referred to local time in Portugal. Do I assume right that now this refers to UTC time? I.e. on this table the conference goes every day from 12:30 to 19:30 (7h duration per day)?
I believe this is important to clarify to all speakers. There might be some speakers for whom the beginning is very early or the end very late…

Thanks!

UPDATE: this question is resolved: in the e-mail I got it says:
“You can mark what times you are available on the calendar when you confirm. Note times are in UTC.”

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