Integrability in Gauge and String Theory

Hybrid conference setup: thoughts & resumee

Hybrid setup for workshops and conferences: a step towards a sustainable scientific work?

Living and working in a globalized and interconnected world poses various questions and serious challenges towards building a sustainable scientific future, both sociologically and ecologically. It became obvious that there won’t be a unique answer settling all of the problems arising in the versatile scientific world; rather many different approaches and small solutions here and there will collectively lead to an overall improvement. Here we would like to share ideas, thoughts and experiences after organizing a large-scale scientific conference in hybrid format. While the first part is concerned with general considerations, we will summarize and comment on the particular implementation for our conference “Integrability in Gauge and String Theory” we organized at ETH Zurich in summer 2023 in the second part.

Thoughts and ideas towards organizing an international scientific conference in a hybrid format

The following elements of a planning and conducting a scientific conference shall be taken care of and transferred into a hybrid format: Hybrid conferences can help making progress in two directions: they allow to reach out and connect to scientists, who would otherwise not be able to travel to the conference for a lack of funds, possibly because working and living in an underprivileged country. Simultaneously, enabling a meaningful and communicative remote participation might lead to less travel, less consumption of energy and resources and therefore a reduced CO₂ footprint.

Planning

• Hybrid options need to be implemented starting from very early planning stages: this is a precondition for seamless and meaningful integration. In particular it paid off to not organize a regular conference and afterwards add a couple of online participation options, but switch to a different mindset from the very beginning: we wanted participants perceive the event as a substantially different type of conference. Given the two advantages of a hybrid conference mentioned above, it is a good idea to figure out, whether particular funds might be available for a conference or workshop leading to a reduced ecological footprint as well as possibly integrating scientists from underprivileged countries.

Advertisement

• We tried to convey the goal of organizing a hybrid conference for reduced CO₂ footprint and more international scientific accessibility consequently along with the scientific direction of the conference. Along those lines, clear statements should be made that organizers favour remote participation over long-distance travel (and train travel over air travel).

• The distinction between a conventional conference with attached video broadcasting and the hybrid format needs to be explained clearly from the very beginning.

• The two possible modi of participations, on-site and remote, need to be presented on equal footing in each advertisement channel. While on-site participation will be rather similar to a non-hybrid format, prospective participants need to be informed about how the remote participation is designed and implemented, in particular how bidirectional communication is going to be made possible. While details are hard to accommodate on a poster, they can at least be described on the conference webpage and be pointed in eMail advertisements.

Presentations (talk & poster):

• In a hybrid setup, presentations can be delivered either on-site or remotely. Our goal was to make the two presentation formats, posters and talks, available to on-site and remote participants simultaneously and – as far as possible – on equal footing. An extremely valuable tool here are discussion stations/discussion hubs: they make possible video and audio transmission between remote participants in a dedicated zoom room and on-site participants gathering around the discussion hub.

• Slides of the talks as well as posters need to be available in electronic format on the conference webpage, such that all participants can access the “printed’ ’ material independent of whether presentations are remote or on-site and independent of their own participation modus.

• Conventional on-site talks shall be extended by a) making remote participants visible to the on-site audience and allowing remote participants to raise hands (and voice) in a way audible by the on-site audience b) making the presentation slides, the (face of the) speaker visible and all language (including questions/comments) audible to the remote audience. A convenor should allow for questions/interruption from the remote audience. In order to allow to highlight and show the pointer as well to a remote audience, use of a digital pointer is advisable. For possible blackboard drawings/additions, a tablet needs to be available, whose screen can then be broadcasted to the remote audience. After the talk, on-site speakers need to be reachable simultaneously for on-site and remote participants for informal chats: a discussion hub/station is perfect here.

• Similarly, remote talks shall not be limited to a mere display of the slides and the voice of the speaker: instead the speaker should be visible on a separate large screen to the on-site audience in the conference venue. The convenor (present in the conference venue) should take care of questions from the on-site audience, alert the remote speaker as well as make sure that the questions to the remote presenter asked in the audience are distributed through the audio system and so consistently transported to the remote speaker and audience. After the talk, the remote speaker should be available for informal chat for both remote and on-site audience: again, the discussion station is a viable technical implementation here.

• All posters, let them be from remote or on-site presenters, shall be printed and displayed in the conference venue.

• Conventional poster presentations (all on-site participants walk around, read posters and ask questions to the available poster presenters) shall be done at a dedicated timeslot. In addition, each on-site poster presenter shall be assigned a separate zoom room, where remote participants could join within the time slot.

• For remote poster presenters, a format needs to be established to present the posters online. One possible implementation is a one-slide brief “talk” in a dedicated zoom room joined by all interested remote participants. Simultaneously, all interested onsite participants can gather around a screen, possibly again at one of the discussion stations.

Informal discussions & coffee breaks

• Discussions during coffee break among on-site participants are the (possibly) most crucial element of a conference. Simultaneously, this is the most difficult element to be implemented in a hybrid setup. The discussion stations as well as a large discussion screen each with dedicated video tranmission already help a lot. A possible option for translating the “walk around and meet people by coincidence” feeling is to use services like gather.town or spatial chat. Made available via the mobile devices of the on-site participants, this is a very versatile technical option. However, a direct on-site communcation will usually win over a conversation via spatial chat.

Accommodation and travel support.

• Of course, decision between remote or on-site participation should be left to each participant. However, an ecologically educated decision can be supported by issuing guidelines or best practices, ideally already within a general invitation eMail. This might include as well travel support: the ETH guidelines for choosing between air travel and ground-based transportation are a good starting point. Transatlantic participants might be suggested a remote participation instead of supporting their transatlantic flights financially.

• If it comes to train travel, a possible strategy could be to end the conference before Friday afternoon already to allow for sufficient time for (at least) all European participants to reach home by train. For the beginning of the conference, it could be made clear that organizers are rather willing to pay for one more night of accommodation (for speakers) than supporting a short flight.

• For air travel difficult to avoid, one could at least compensate CO₂ emissions.

Culinarics: coffee break and conference dinner

• The culinaric part of a conference is probably the most difficult to carry over into a hybrid setup. Attempts of meeting for an “in-front-of-screen’ ’-dinner have worked nicely, however, for audiences up to 25 participants only. A general ecological approach could, however, be implemented starting along the following lines:

  • vegetarian options for the conference dinner and coffee breaks exclusively

  • provide coffee the old-fashioned way in coffee pots, or use a machine grinding the coffee on-site: capsules of any kind are a terrible option

  • same applies to milk in plastic containers: a pot of milk/cream/soy milk/almond milk will do equally well

  • use resuable cutlery and dishes, no disposable products.

Technical implementation within the hybrid conference “Integrability in Gauge and String Theory 2023”

• Within the conference IGST‘23, the implementation of the technical requirements for persentations of talks and posters as well as discussions were based on a set of Linux computers communicating via ethernet in a virtual subnetwork.

• The setup for IGST‘23 was based on five computers:

  • the presenter computer, running the main presentation projecter, a tablet attached as well as a room camera.

  • two discussion hub computers, each with a video owl (audio & video broadcasting system, focussing the current speaker automatically) and screen. One discussion hub computer would run a second projector.

  • a Surface Pro communication system running Linux (computer built into 50-inch screen together with cameras and microphones)

  • a “control’ ’ laptop, from which all other computers could be monitored and controlled (see below).

• At IGST’23, we have been using several different Zoom accounts and ran different Zoom sessions simultaneously. If required, we would break up a central zoom session in several breakout rooms.

• A set of bash scripts together with a python-based frontend running on the control computer would allow to:

  • establish and finish zoom sessions on each computer, display various zoom windows on various screens, switch between gallery modes etc., create and destroy breakout rooms.

  • distribute and align data (e.g. printed posters, files of talks) among the five computers

  • start and finish recordings for each of the zoom sessions.

  The whole communication is based on creating a virtual subnetwork including a namespace allowing to address the conference computers separately.

• We (the organizers of IGST‘23) would be happy to share knowledge and more technical details on the software/hardware side of the hybrid implementation.

Resumee of the hybrid conference “Integrability in Gauge and String Theory 2023”

Many of the above aspects were highly praised by the conference participants, in particular the discussion hubs, the review break and the four day scientific programme format. The free choice of on-site vs. online delivery of talks and posters enabled a couple of online presentations which could not have been realised on-site due to restricted availability of presenter. Only very few items received mixed responses, namely the online conference fee and the digital pointer device implementation (works well only with some instruction and practice before the talk). Not too surprisingly, the purely vegetarian food supply was appreciated almost unanimously. The offer of a channel for hybrid social interactions using the tool SpatialChat was used only upon substantial encouragement, mostly because on-site participants were too preoccupied with on-site coffee break discussions.

The evaluation of the affiliations of on-site vs. remote participants displayed an encouraging picture with regard to avoiding CO₂ emissions due to travel activities at a hybrid scientific meeting: With some assigment of short/medium/long/overseas distances, the conference had 42/19/11/9 on-site participants vs 14/14/6/17 online participants. These numbers show that there is a clear tendency for nearby researchers (train distance) to attend the meeting on-site (despite high accommodation costs in Zurich) and for overseas researchers to join online. It is evident that these preferences are related to the time and budgetary investments of traveling overseas (ecological conscience may be another contributing factor). With these numbers and the total distances travelled, one may estimate the greenhouse gas emissions of the 81 on-site participants at around 70t CO2 equivalent. Conversely, the travel of the 51 online participants would have amounted to 100t CO₂ equivalent emissions, a significantly larger figure for a significantly smaller group. While surely only a tiny fraction of the latter emissions would have been realised in an on-site only meeting, the hybrid format allowed a good number of online participants to hear about recent advances in this research field and to participate in discussions of their scientific content.