Collaborative Research: RAPID: Virtual Conference Platform

COVID-19的蔓延迫使实体学术会议突然转向网上。由于会议对许多科学和工程社区的结构至关重要，因此使其在线版本尽可能好-特别是，尽我们所能取代作为会议生命线的非结构化，偶然的对话和联系-是至关重要的。但迄今为止，虚拟会议在复制这种“走廊讨论”方面并不十分成功。“该项目的目标是迅速开发一个名为Clowdr的基于网络的虚拟会议平台，该平台将支持与会者之间同步互动的几种模式，同时减轻与会者在最近活动中报告的整合问题。从长远来看，基于Clowdr的在线会议将成为会议生态系统不可或缺的一部分，支持减少科学研究协调的碳足迹，提高多样性，可访问性和公平性的努力。该项目的直接重点是将成功举办会议所需的所有必要技术集成到一个简单易用的Web界面中。该平台的第一个版本将于2020年6月底完成，并将根据一系列会议的参与者和组织者的反馈不断改进，直到今年年底。该平台将包括沿着聊天和问答组件的观看现场演讲的区域、观众意识观看过去现场演讲的区域、参与者可以加入并轻松切换的海报和演示空间、参与者可以开始临时文本和视频聊天的大厅区域以及其他功能。 该平台将在以后用作会议环境中人类社会互动研究的基础。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The spread of COVID-19 is forcing physical academic conferences to suddenly move online. Since conferences are critical to the fabric of many scientific and engineering communities, making their online versions as good as they can be -- especially, doing everything we can to replace the unstructured, serendipitous conversations and connections that are the lifeblood of conferences -- is of the utmost importance. But the virtual conferences that have happened so far have not been very successful at replicating this "hallway discussions." The goal of this project is to rapidly develop a Web-based virtual conference platform, dubbed Clowdr, that will support several modalities for synchronous interaction among participants while alleviating the integration problems reported by participants at recent events. In the longer term, Clowdr-based online meetings will become an integral part of the conference ecosystem, supporting efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of scientific research coordination and improve diversity, accessibility, and fairness.The immediate focus for the project is the integration of all the necessary technological pieces for a successful conference in a single, easy-to-use web interface. A first version of this platform will be ready by the end of June 2020, and it will be continually improved until the end of the year based on participant and organizer feedback from a series of conferences. The platform will include areas for watching live talks along with chat and question-and-answer components, an area for watching past live talks with audience awareness, a poster and demo space where participants can join and easily switch, a lobby area where participants can start ad-hoc text and video chats, and other features. The platform will be used later as the basis for research on human-social interactions in conference settings.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.