Dear QUATIC 2021 Participant,

Thanks again for your interest in QUATIC’2021 and are looking forward to your participation and involvement in the virtual conference (8-10, September 2021). The overall conference program can be found at https://2021.quatic.org/program.

The virtual conference will be supported by Zoom (https://zoom.us/). Using Zoom is very easy. If you still haven’t used it, please install it in advance. You can find installation instructions here for all types of platforms.

The conference will run in some virtual rooms, whose links will appear in the program itself. Access will be protected by a password that will be emailed to you separately before the beginning of the conference. See this 1 minute tutorial on joining a Zoom meeting.

The conference rooms will be the following:

• Main Room will be used for the Opening and Closing Sessions, Keynotes, and Panels (available during corresponding sessions, as described in the Program)

• Parallel Session Rooms A and B will be used for technical sessions.

• before and during the conference, the support team can be accessed through quatic2021tech@ualg.pt, for those having problems in setting up their Zoom client.

Each session will have a Host, a Session Chair, several Speakers (one at a time), and Participants. The Host will be a member of the technical staff that facilitates the use of the technology and can be the same person as the Session Chair in some sessions. The Session Chair will coordinate the session and manage the questions and answers (Q&A) periods. Each Speaker must be one of the authors of the paper to be presented online. Since on average we have three authors per each QUATIC’2021 paper, we haven’t considered the possibility of broadcasting pre-recorded presentations. Furthermore, we believe it will be more interesting, both for authors and for the audience, to have alive (synchronous) presentations by the original authors. Participants are all those attending the session. Anybody who has registered for the conference can attend any session (or change to a parallel one) at any time.

Notice that the conference schedule is expressed in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) hours. UTC is the primary time standard by which the world regulates clocks and time. With QUATIC'2021 authors ranging from Costa Rica (mostly UTC-6) to Japan (UTC+9), it is impossible to run the conference in “convenient” hours for everybody, but we did our best effort. For instance, our colleagues from the National Institute of Informatics and the Hirohisa Aman (Ehime University) in Japan will hopefully make their presentation at 1:00 PM UTC (10:00 PM in Tokyo, Japan) and at 1:00 PM UTC (10:00 PM in Matsuyama, Japan). As for our colleagues in United States and Latin America, we hope that the quality of our invited keynote speakers in the morning will be worth waking up a little bit earlier than usual. We will understand if they will still be wearing a pajama 😉. To check the time zone difference from your location to UTC, we suggest you use The Time Zone Converter. Just write UTC on the left side and your country or capital on the right side.

Because virtual conferences are still a new(ish) experience for most of us, we have detailed instructions, organized by role.

PARTICIPANT

1. Please mute your microphone unless you wish to speak.

2. If possible, keep your camera on as it's nice to see people!

3. If you have a question or need clarification during a talk please "raise your hand" or, if you prefer, use the comment/chat facility (consider seeing this 2 minutes tutorial on what a Zoom participant can do).

4. However, for complex questions, these are usually better handled after the author's presentation. A time slot will be allocated for that purpose.

SPEAKER

1. Please join your session 15 minutes before it is scheduled to start, so that any technical problems can be ironed out and you can 'meet' with the Session Chair.

2. Previously share your short bio (i.e., send him/her an email) so the Session Chair can introduce your talk. The contact of your Session Chair can be found in https://2021.quatic.org/committees.

3. Check the audio levels and screen sharing.

4. We will use screen sharing so have your slides e.g., PowerPoint (or other alternatives, such as Beamer, if you use LaTeX) ready. We recommend you hide other redundant windows to make the presentation more seamless. See this 1 minute tutorial on sharing content in a Zoom meeting.

5. There is no specific formatting rules for slides, so use what suits you. We imagine many people will use PowerPoint but there are alternatives eg beamer (if you use LaTeX).

6. Please stick strictly to the times (Full papers 25+5mins; Short papers 15+5mins). The Session Chair will give a reminder 3 minutes before the end of your allotted time. However, we don't want to erode discussion time or jeopardize the overall schedule.

7. You might wish to previously rehearse in order to get the timing accurate and since, for many of us, virtual conference speaking is an unfamiliar experience.

8. If you wish, you can send a link to your slides to the Website Chair (Jose_Vicente_Reis@iscte-iul.pt) and we will update the detailed program. This may be more effective if you do it in advance.

SESSION CHAIR

1. For each session you will chair, meet with your speakers in the assigned room 15 minutes before the session is due to start. Check the screen sharing. Remind them of the timings.

2. Time for presentation and discussion: Full papers are 25 mins (max) presentation including your introduction and questions/interruptions followed by 5 mins discussion. Short papers are 15 mins (max) presentation followed by 5 mins discussion.

3. Determine how each speaker wishes to be introduced.

4. Briefly introduce the Session and remind the audience of the question protocol (normally only simple questions and clarifications during a talk) notified by hand-raising. This will be followed by the aforementioned period of discussion. Other questions can be introduced as Chat (and upvoted by the audience).

5. Introduce each speaker.

6. Track time and give a 3-minute warning.

7. Look out for raised hands.

8. Be prepared to stop the talk after the time limit. Be strict! If a talk finishes early allow a short pause so that the next talk is synchronized with the schedule.

9. For the discussion encourage participation. Allow pauses, as many participants are still learning to be comfortable with the technology and virtual conferences.

10. For technical help please use the TechSupport e-mail which will be supported by the IT Team for the duration of the conference.

Good luck everyone. We look forward to a stimulating and valuable conference.

Best wishes,

Organizing Chair

Local Organizing Chairs

Program Chairs