Collaborative Research: RAPID: Virtual Conference Platform

COVID-19的传播迫使物理学术会议突然转移到网上。由于会议对许多科学和工程社区的结构至关重要，因此，尽可能地完善它们的在线版本——特别是，尽我们所能取代作为会议命脉的非结构化、偶然的对话和联系——是至关重要的。但是到目前为止，已经发生的虚拟会议在复制这种“走廊讨论”方面并不是很成功。该项目的目标是快速开发一个基于web的虚拟会议平台，称为Clowdr，它将支持参与者之间的同步交互的几种模式，同时减轻参与者在最近的活动中报告的集成问题。从长远来看，基于clowdr的在线会议将成为会议生态系统的一个组成部分，支持减少科学研究协调的碳足迹，提高多样性、可及性和公平性。该项目的当务之急是将所有必要的技术部件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月底准备就绪，并将根据参与者和组织者在一系列会议上的反馈，在年底前不断改进。该平台将包括观看现场演讲以及聊天和问答组件的区域，一个观看过去的现场演讲的区域，一个参与者可以加入和轻松切换的海报和演示空间，一个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。该平台随后将被用作研究会议环境中人类社会互动的基础。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，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.