Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, ICSA 2021 made an early, and as it turned out, wise decision to move to a full virtual conference. Therefore, ICSA 2021 has all advantages (cheap registration, easy to attend, no travel and corresponding climate footprint, …) and disadvantages (less interaction, harder socializing, …) of being a virtual event. On this page we provide some information on the conference’s organization as virtual event.
Note: Please visit the page on a regular basis to learn about the latest updates!
Prerecorded Talks
ICSA 2021 will not use live talks for most of the main event. Authors will be asked to provide pre-recorded, 10-minute videos of their talks. We will share the talks over YouTube and link them in the virtual conference management system. Discussion sessions during the conference will then provide summaries of submitted papers (<= 5min) and we will have Questions and Answers (Q&A) session. Discussions will be prepared upfront in the virtual conference management system.
Virtual Conference Management System
The conference will be managed and operated under the hood of the Whova conference management system. You can find ICSA’s Whova page here. The ICSA agenda in Whova embeds your prerecorded YouTube videos and Zoom meetings for all live sessions. This means all information you need is centralized inside of Whova. Channels per session and for all types of socializing or networking activities will be provided in addition by Whova. All registered participants will be invited to Whova via mail some time after completing the registration form (there is a delay as we manually enter attendees after some cross-checks). We recommend that you become familiar with the system as soon as you receive your invitation. It is recommended to install the Whova app but not required. Note: Whova’s invitation mail may get lost due to a multitude of reasons, Spam filters being the number one of those. In case you did not get an invitation mail, you can also onboard directly. Use the email address provided during the registration process to log into Whova’s ICSA page. If you are new to Whova you will be guided through a wizard to create your password for the system.
Multi-Time-Zone Mode
All discussion sessions of ICSA 2021 will be scheduled to take place twice with the objective that in each of the three major time zones (Europe, Asia, America) people can attend their preferred sessions during mostly business hours. The few live sessions, like the keynote presentations, conference opening, etc. will be played back or shared via video recording. Q&As will be done in this case in an asynchronous fashion via Whova.
Social Events
Socializing during a virtual conference is a difficult task. We will nevertheless try to compensate for lack of personal interaction as much as possible. We aim for a pre-recorded Stuttgart city tour hosted by the general chairs and their teams. During the conference we offer social interaction in breaks and dedicated sessions with some fun games to get connected. In Whova there will be private meeting rooms to connect and collaborate while the conference is running. For those interested, we will host a bring your own drink event close to the city tour.
Conference Booklet
Download the conference booklet (V1.0) from here. The conference booklet contains all relevant needed to survive your ICSA conference week. It contains details on all agenda items to help you plan your conference attendance. Find details on all tracks and our workshops. We will keep updating the booklet in case of changes or mistakes. Check for updates regularly.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Is it necessary to visit ICSA’s Whova event page?
A: Yes! We are using the system to distribute all relevant conference information. This way we ensure that only eligible attendees will get sensible data like the zoom links in order to avoid security issues. Please do not share this data (in particular the Zoom links) to untrusted third-party persons to avoid issues like Zoom bombing. In addition, we can ensure via Whova that at all times in all time zones (24h/day of ICSA 2021) there will be people taking care of you as fast as possible.
Q: Will there be live presentations for papers in the main tracks?
A: No. All main track attendees have created prerecorded talks which you as participant should watch upfront. In the live sessions all papers will only be summarized by a 3min live talk and then we will dive into a discussion on the paper’s content.
Q: I did not get any information on Whova, the virtual ICSA, etc. What should I do?
A: You have been sent information on the virtual ICSA via the mail address you used when you registered for ICSA. In case you did not get any information, please contact us as soon as possible so that we can resolve your issues.
Get started with Whova
Visit our Whova web page or download the Whova app.