IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine - Q1 2021 - 82

The format change to a virtual environment, a first-ever case in our IEEE CAS Society
and one of the first ones for a large flagship conference within IEEE, has notably
influenced both the operation and the outcome.
III. Co-Designing the Virtual Platform
Timeline-wise, 9 weeks before the new conference schedule, established from October 10th to 21st, Conflux from
Conference Catalysts (CCLLC, Gainesville, FL) was selected as the virtual platform for ISCAS 2020 due to its
outstanding robustness proofed in previous large conferences and the possibility to tightly interact with the
design team. Prior to that, an intense internal discussion
among organizers was held to assess the new distinctive
features the virtual event should have. They included,
as major milestones, the coordination with IEEE MCE
(Meetings, Conferences & Events) for the publication
of videos in Open Preview and the planification of webbased tools for professional networking operation. Both
aspects were successfully implemented, although their
impact on the overall conference experience differed as
it will be disclosed in Sec. V.
Differently to previous ISCAS editions, the accepted
papers were made available first to those with access
to CASS publications within IEEEXplore, and then this
year, the pre-recorded video presentations were also
available upfront in Open Preview 2 weeks before the
conference started, seeking to enhance the promotion
and visibility of the research contributions. Furthermore, ISCAS 2020 joined a pioneering initiative at IEEE
and most of the videos were accompanied with synchronized transcripts to search and maximize engagement
and information retention by the participants. This extra feature, a step beyond a conventional YouTube channel, was positively valued by the conference attendees.
On the other hand, regarding the virtual platform,
an in-depth process of customization and extension
of functionalities in tight co-design with the management and development team of Conflux was conducted
with the aim to foster technical and social discussion
in topics relevant to the CAS community. Networking
Rooms were designed and included in the platform to
facilitate interaction among and across participants.
These networking rooms were conceived to be requested and announced upfront (and, hence, pre-registered) for medium size meetings accessible by invitation, and moderated by the full registrant triggering
the request. To avoid overlaps with the technical program, these rooms were expected to be used during
open time slots.
Ad-hoc delegate encounters in Autonomous Rooms
were also designed and included to make possible pro82

IEEE CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS MAGAZINE

fessional meetings all-pervasively to the timeframe of
the program and throughout the whole conference. In
this case, rooms could be called upon in an spontaneous manner without preregistration or moderation, and
they were conceived for time-bounded one-on-one or
multilateral groups up to 10 participants. The purpose
of these rooms was visualized as an analog to meandering through colleagues in coffee break conference areas
to select with whom and when to meet and interact with.
The online framework, including networking features, was available to the community the week before
the conference started.
IV. Running the Conference In Virtual Mode: Some
Overview Analytics Interpreting the Numbers
A total of 220 Zoom Sessions (Webinars and Large Meeting
up to 500 participants) were available in the Conflux online Platform. Beyond our impression of responsiveness
and professionalism in designing and later running the
platform by the Conflux team, the opinions we received
from the delegates were aligned in highlighting the ease of
navigation through the technical program in the platform.
ISCAS2020 had two registration modalities, namely
Full Registrants and Sit-in Registrants. The former had:
i) publication rights; ii) full-fledged privileges to participate in the Q&A part of all technical sessions, and iii)
the highest priority in the networking sessions of the
virtual platform. Regarding sit-in registrants, they had
the right to witness paper presentations and videos and
had a low priority in the networking activities' participation. This new, reduced-rights registration modality
was agreed with CAS Society. It was aimed to provide
Outreach of the scientific results of the conference and
increase membership. Most Full-Registrants completed
their registration by the early deadline of February,
when the conference was still planned to be face-to-face.
Out of the total number of 955 operations made by that
date only 46 delegates asked for cancellation following
the announcement of the migration of the conference
to the virtual modality. The sit-in registration modality was open specifically for the virtual conference. All
paper co-authors who were not registered in the early
phase (about 2.200 people) were offered free sit-in credentials. About 33 percent of them replied to the invitation and registered for the conference. Also, the sit-in
modality was broadly open for registration with a
reduced fee and free for IEEE students and IEEE Life
FIRST QUARTER 2021

IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine - Q1 2021

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