MCM in Paris, 2023

The next MCM conference takes place in (downtown) Paris next 26-30 June. Deadlines are 31 December for mini-symposia/invited sessions and 28 February for contributed talks/posters. I appreciate very much the effort in lowering the registration fees to 80€ for students and 170€ for others, whilst including lunches into the deal! (The view of Paris in the above logo is actually taking from Paris Jussieu campus.)

an extra day for registering for ISBA²²

ISBA 2021, one more week but already in the future!

The main section of the ISBA 2021 (formerly ISBA 2020) conference starts a week from today, with short courses this week, but it is now a futuristic conference in that… the number of registered participants already exceeds the year of the meeting! There are currently 2033 registrations, a quantic leap from the earlier editions (if helped with the virtual nature of the meeting and the absence of any registration fee). Here are the recommendations to be found on the Whova conference portal, just in case:

The ISBA conference will be a mixture of live talks, pre-recorded talks, and posters. All live-streaming will be via Zoom, with links integrated into the Whova platform.

1. 1. Plenary talks (i.e., Foundational Lectures, Keynote Lectures, and Named Lectures) and all invited talks will be live-streamed during the corresponding sessions.
   2. Contributed talks are prerecorded (available from June 10, 2021). During the live-streamed Contributed Sessions, each speaker will give a 5-min live recap of their contributed talk,  highlighting the main points, followed by live discussion and Q&A from the audience.
   3. Contributed speakers who had optionally chosen to accompany their talk with a poster will present the poster in their designated Poster Sessions. All Poster Sessions will be held on Gather.town, which will also serve as the virtual space for social times during the whole conference.
   4. Gather.town is live at https://gather.town/app/QZTh2a4InnLxAvYF/ISBA_WM_2021_main. You should be able to access with the same email used to register for Whova.

And be aware that the schedule page does not contain the links to the prerecorded videos and slides. Make sure to use the webapp link.

[o-l] ISBA 2021 [百花齊放，百家爭鳴]

As usual, when looking for our ISBA World conference, ISBA [now] 2021, many alternative realities emerge, ISBA being such a popular acronym! The actual dates for the (true and only) ISBA 2021 conference are 28 June – 02 July and the location is no longer Kunming, China, since there is a pandemic going on!!! The conference is now on-line, which forces a complete rethinking of its organisation, away from a sheer replica on Zoom of the traditional conference. And with no registration fees!! I have agreed to join other ISBA members to contribute (with limited abilities) to this switch and obviously welcome comments towards it! Having greatly learned from the earlier experience with the One World Bernoulli+IMS conference last summer, thanks to the dedication and imagination of Leif Döring!, here are some line of thought:

• Keep in mind days are 24 hours long and attention span much smaller, towards keeping the offer manageable for a fully engaged participant
• Account and take advantage of the multiple time zones available to virtual participants to stretch the schedule to cover as many participants as possible, with a potential multiplication of (plenary) talks and posters
• Avoid filling the on-line schedule with live talks but have them pre-registered, possibly with several levels of length and depth, including a one-slide two-minute version
• Exploit on-line abilities to focus solely (?) on interactions, which is the main point of conferences, meaning participants joining for a thematic session over a reasonable duration to discuss talks or posters they had attended on their own before, with a catalyst leading the show with prepared questions
• Preregister poster presentations as well, so that live poster sessions involve only questions and discussions, and group poster by theme (an attempt of mine at the earlier ISBA conferences) so that presenters and visitors can interact at the theme level rather than being stuck in an empty room with one’s poster
• Create local mirrors when people could physically (safely!) gather to attend the conference, from watching videos and poster together to engage into a local plus virtual discussion during interaction sessions. I certainly plan to hold one such session in Paris [if there and not in Eindhoven on 28 June – 02 July]
• Find ways to engage participants to fully commit to the conference (see above), for instance by preparing a “I am away at ISBA 2021” card one could post on whatever social or asocial networks one favours (but maybe not as one’s vacation email automated reply, unless the card is a few bytes…)

BayesComp 20 [registration open]

The registration page is now open for BayesComp 20, in Gainesville, Florida, next 7-10 Jan 2020. The fees are quite moderate, imho, given the fact that they cover all breaks (if not the conference dinner). Deadline for these early rates is August 14. There will also be travel support from various sponsors, with deadline for application being September 20. Contributed sessions will be announced soon, with possible openings for last minute breakthrough sessions. Calls are still open for tutorials on 07 January and for posters.