Instructions for ECIR 2021 attendees

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, ECIR 2021 will be a fully virtual conference. Nevertheless, we are committed to promoting a conference program that is convenient for people in our community all around the world, regardless of their time zone.

We want to call your attention to the fact that all times indicated in the ECIR 2021 schedule are in the CEST timezone (UTC+2), and not in CET (UTC+1). In fact, Italy is now in CET but will move to CEST, i.e., daylight saving time, in the night between March 27 and 28, i.e., the night before the conference begins. So, for instance, all Sunday 28 morning tutorials will start at 9:00 CEST (UTC+2), and not at 9:00 CET (UTC+1). Mark your calendar accordingly!

We will manage the tutorials, the doctoral consortium, the workshops, the industry day, the keynotes, the panel, the full paper sessions, and the CLEF lab description papers, using Zoom (https://zoom.us) and Whova (https://whova.com), while the sessions with short papers and demo papers will be held using Gather Town (https://gather.town/). ECIR 2021 Platinum sponsor Bloomberg, and Golden sponsors Amazon, Google, and eBay will have virtual booths on both Whova and Gather Town to engage with the attendees.

In the following, you will find some information useful for enjoying the conference and interacting with speakers and other attendees on Whova, Zoom, and Gather.town

Virtual SWAG Bag

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Whova

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For feature details, visit Whova

Whova will be the central venue of the conference. To access it, you have to sign up to the Whova ECIR 2021 platform at https://whova.com/portal/ecire_202010/ using the email address you used to register to the conference. On March 27th, you will receive an email with the code for joining the live conference on Whova. You can connect to Whova either using the Whova mobile app (available for Android and iOS) or from your desktop/laptop using the Whova Web application. Every day the updated agenda of the event will be published on Whova. Note that, only by signing into the Whova ECIR 2021 platform you can have access to links to the live streams. Whova also provides community tools such as attendees list, sponsor pages, forum boards, direct messaging, paper sharing. The Whova app for Android can be downloaded from: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.whova.event&referrer=utm_source%3D%26utm_medium%3Dportal%26utm_content%3Decire_202010 The Whova app for iOS can be downloaded from: https://itunes.apple.com/app/apple-store/id716979741?pt=1944835&ct=&mt=8 The Whova Web application for desktop/laptop can be accessed from: https://whova.com/portal/webapp/ecire_202010

Zoom

We will use Zoom to stream ECIR 2021 worldwide. Each session on Whova is linked to a “Live Stream”. By clicking on the “Live Stream”, you will be asked to open the stream in your {mobile, desktop} browser or in your Zoom stand-alone application. Both methods are good to access the live stream. ECIR 2021 uses Zoom Webinars. The attendees of the ECIR 2021 webinars have three main ways of interaction with panellists, i.e., the speakers and session chairs: 1) the Q&A button at the bottom of the screen to write questions; 2) the Chat, addressing panellists only or both panellists and attendees; 3) the “raise hand” button. Please note that Zoom webinars do not have “reactions”. It means that you need to use the zoom chat to write your reaction after a talk.

Gather.town

We know virtual conferences limit the possibility to encounter and chat with other attendees. ECIR 2021 relies on gather.town to facilitate face to face interactions. You will be able to bump into colleagues and friends, have chance encounters with other conference attendees, and strike up conversations with your fellow researchers, just like you would do at an in-person event. The platform will be used also for the presentation of the short and demo papers in the three poster sessions of the conference. The gather.town space will be available on a 24-hour basis starting from Thursday, 25 March at the following link: https://gather.town/app/JEs1fR2iMCaOnMHP/ECIR. Gather.town is supported by Chrome and Firefox, or by using the dedicated app. Other browsers might work as well. A guide on how to use the gather.town platform for ECIR 2021 is available here: https://www.ecir2021.eu/ecir-2021-conference-on-gathertown/

If you are a speaker in a session

If you are a speaker in a session of one of the ECIR 2021 events we ask you to join the session at its beginning and be ready to raise your hand as soon as the session chair (look at her/his name in the program) asks for the speakers of the session. All the webinars will be managed by a zoom host (you can easily identify her/him by looking at the participant with the ECIR 2021 logo) and the session chairs: contact them for any technical issue you can have by writing to the panellists of the webinar using the Zoom chat.

If you are a presenter of a Demo or a Poster

If you are a presenter in a short/demo paper session we ask you to join ECIR 2021 virtual space on gather.town (https://gather.town/app/JEs1fR2iMCaOnMHP/ECIR) 15 minutes before the start of the session and locate the booth assigned to your short or demo paper. To help find your poster, booths are numbered. The mapping with your paper is reported in the detailed program available on the official website: https://www.ecir2021.eu/detailed-program/. You will find your poster already loaded on the virtual booth and you will have only to wait for the visitors at the booth keeping in mind the instructions for interacting with the visitors that we have already sent you (also reported here: https://www.ecir2021.eu/poster-and-demo-sessions-on-gathertown/).