Planning a Virtual UIST 2021 (repost)

This is a reposting of an article shared in the ACM UIST Medium blog. If you choose to clap for it, please clap on the original version of the article. This version has been slightly updated to include details about our Discord server that were released since the original post.

I was pretty nervous when I agreed to take on the General Chair role for UIST 2021. UIST 2020 hadn’t happened yet, and it was not at all clear to me whether a virtual version of UIST would be possible to do at all, much less do well. Fortunately, thanks to all of the great people who put time into UIST 2020, they were able to demonstrate that not only can UIST be held virtually, but that a virtual version of the conference can be a great success!

UIST 2021 will also be virtual, and we plan to borrow much of the format that made the previous conference so successful. We are planning to make some changes however, and I’ll discuss those below.

I think it’s easiest to start explaining our vision in terms of how things will be the same and different from 2020.

First, all of the venues from last year will return in 2021. Our calls for papers already include full papers, demos, posters, and the doctoral symposium, and expect to see calls for the Student Innovation Contest and the inspirational Visions track coming soon.

Second, I expect the infrastructure to be mostly the same, using a combination of Zoom, Discord, and a website to enable communication between participants.

• Zoom will be used for plenaries, talks and any panel-style sessions, similar to how it was used this year. I expect the webinar style to be used as it was in 2020, though we may hire professional staff to run things behind the scenes.
• Discord will be the main forum for communication, with separate channels for papers, sessions, posters, etc.
• A web site will help participants track the schedule, acquire access to content such as papers and videos, etc. This will likely be an extension from 2020’s Gallery.
• All live events will be recorded and posted to YouTube.

There are some differences that I and the UIST 2021 Digital Participation chairs are working to implement, of course. I should note that many of these ideas are early and subject to change, and I’ll be sure to write subsequent posts if there are any major modifications that prospective authors and attendees should be aware of.

There will be several differences during the conference:

• 24 Hour Schedule. Instead of trying to squeeze all of the content into a shortened day for best timezone accessibility, we will have a schedule that is 24 hours a day for the full duration of the conference. Keynotes and other plenary sessions will be scheduled live in time slots that work maximally for all time zones, and may rotate so that hardships are shared equally around the world. Papers, demos, posters, and other content will be presented at least twice, such that at least one of the presentations should be easy to attend for a person in any timezone.
• New Presentation Format. Because of the 24 hour schedule, we believe we will be able to have longer talks and smaller sessions, and possibly fewer simultaneous tracks. Exact timing is still to be worked out, but we expect presentations to be longer than last year at roughly 10 minutes, and followed by about 5 minutes of questions for just that paper. Sessions will be followed by a designated time where authors will make themselves available in separate Discord channels for each presented paper. Attendees will be able to find authors in these channels for 1:1 or small group discussions around the paper content.
• Meetups. We will have “birds of a feather” meetups on particular topics scheduled throughout the conference. These will be ways for new participants to meet members of the community, people with shared interests in a particular topic to communicate, etc. We expect to do a “Call for Meetups” and let people organize and schedule their own events, though some will be organized by the UIST 2021 committee. Look for this call in the coming months.

All of these ideas will be augmented by a richer pre-conference experience:

• UIST Discord Server open year-round. Starting late last week, we relaunched the Discord server from UIST 2020 for continuing conversations about the conference organization and UIST research in general. You can join now by clicking this link. As part of the relaunch of the Discord server, I will host an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on UIST 2021 conference organization, my job at Apple, errors you may have discovered in my thesis, or anything else you’d like to discuss. I’ll host the AMA in two separate sessions for better accessibility in different time zones, on the following schedule:
  AMA #1:
  8:00–9:00 am, Tue, Jan 26 2021 (PST, Pacific Standard Time (US))
  5:00–6:00 pm, Tue, Jan 26 2021 (CET, Central European Time)
  1:00–2:00 am, Wed, Jan 27 2021 (JST, Japan Standard Time)
  AMA #2:
  10:00–11:00 pm, Tue, Jan 26 2021 (PST, Pacific Standard Time (US))
  7:00–8:00 am, Wed, Jan 27 2021 (CET, Central European Time)
  3:00–4:00 pm, Wed, Jan 27 2021 (JST, Japan Standard Time)
  So, if there’s something you really dislike in this post, these sessions would be a great time to give feedback!
• Conference content to be available as early as possible. For papers, we expect to make pre-prints of papers available to registered conference attendees one week after the camera-ready deadline. The goal is to increase engagement with the conference content by making it available for consumption in advance, with the hope that this can lead to better questions and more discussion. We also hope to have a variety of features on the paper hosting web site, such as a button allowing attendees to indicate interest in a paper, which we can use as an input to make scheduling decisions similar in concept to Cobi.
• Remember, your papers will available to conference attendees as early as August 11, 2021. No, it’s not a mistake that I wrote that a second time. This is very different from previous years, and I want to make sure that everyone realizes that they will need to complete any processes, like intellectual property applications, much earlier than in previous years.
• Very early registration: As you may have guessed, conference registration will become available much earlier than previous years. Registering will get you access to content and special channels on the Discord server, and likely some ability to influence the schedule of the conference.
• Clarity up front on content needed from presenters: By the paper submission deadline, we will announce the content expected from presenters if their paper is accepted.

I’m also excited about one change that we’re making for this year that will probably not be apparent to many attendees, but I hope will ease and improve the paper review process for this year and into the future. This year Gierad Laput will serve as our Program Technology Chair, with the mission of creating technology to help our Program Chairs carry out their job more efficiently. I expect this will involve tooling to help Ranjitha and Michael assign ACs to papers, track the review process, and carry out a great Program Committee meeting.

Conference organization is no easy task, and I want to thank all of the great folks who have agreed to take volunteer roles in helping to organize the conference and already put in a lot of hard work. You can see the full list on our web page. Please thank them if you see them, presumably virtually on the Discord server.

If you have feedback or suggestions for UIST 2021, I’m interested to hear your thoughts. You are welcome to comment on this post, reach out to me by e-mail at jeff@jeffreynichols.com or find me on the UIST Discord server. On Discord, comments can be left in the #townhall channel.

I look forward to seeing many of you (virtually) at UIST 2021!