JuliaCon 2020 Update

avik
Wed, 06 May 2020 10:10:28 +0000
Announcements

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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