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Virtual Platforms

The COVID-19 pandemic forced many conferences to adapt to virtual formats, and Sash Rush shares insights from his experience as the general chair of the International Conference of Learning Representations (ICLR). He describes how the team, led by program chair Shakir Mohammed, developed a unique platform from scratch to host the conference online. This platform included features like individual paper pages with video presentations and chat rooms, allowing for asynchronous interaction among attendees.

We built a website that was based around this idea that everyone in the conference would be in kind of a slack-like chat room.

--- Sash Rush

The virtual format not only increased attendance but also enabled participation from regions that typically face barriers to attending in-person events 1.

   

Hybrid Models

Looking ahead, Sash Rush envisions a hybrid model for future conferences, combining in-person and virtual elements to enhance accessibility and community engagement. He highlights the success of mentorship sessions conducted over Zoom and the open-sourcing of the conference tools, which have been adopted by other major conferences like ACL and ICML.

Since then, we open sourced all the tools that we built for the conference.

--- Sash Rush

Chris Benson appreciates the flexibility of the virtual format, which allows attendees to engage with content asynchronously, overcoming challenges like time zone differences and visa issues 2.