IUC 45 remote attendance options required

Tue Sep 28 08:51:00 CDT 2021

Hi Mike and others,

I appreciate there's a step in the right direction and a remote
connectivity option for speakers is useful. Thank you. Sharing of
conference videos is finally happening, that's a good step as well.

Still, I think this solution severely lacks remote participation. I've
attended conferences such as the ATypI Tech Talks 2021 or the Type Tech
Meetup which were better set-up for making the conference attendance
accessible remotely. The technology is there. Post event video catch-up is
useful, but it does not replace, for example, a forum or chat room in which
questions can be asked by the audience directly after a talk and brought to
the room.

The numbers on participation being mostly US and even California centric
lead me to think about survivorship bias. Perhaps there's a problem in
itself in how this conference is set up, how it invites attendees and whom
it makes excited to join? We may ask ourselves why the numbers are like
that, and why the conference is not attracting a more diverse audience. The
fact that the audience numbers so far have been North America centric or
even California centric does not mean that the conference should be
organized exclusively for that audience. Instead, in my opinion, it should
be opened up wider and make it even easier for an international audience to
attend and participate.

I find there are good topics and content that interest me in this
conference, but I'd like to share my opinion here in the hope of future
improvements.

Dominik

On Tue, Sep 28, 2021 at 4:22 PM Mike Narducci <mike at omg.org> wrote:

> Hi Dominik,
>
>
>
> Apologies.  In the subsequent email exchanges, it looks like you were
> inadvertently omitted from the email thread.  Below is my Sunday reply to
> the whole group.
>
>
>
> *Hi All,*
>
>
> * Thank you for your patience.  *
>
>
>
> *We have a solution!  Now the long-winded lead up…*
>
>
>
> *Let me start out by saying that we will not be offering a hybrid approach
> for attendees at IUC 45.  This has been planned as a face to face event,
> and to pivot to hybrid this late in the process would be difficult.  Not
> just from a staffing/logistics/financial perspective but also from a, well,
> financial perspective…  What I mean by this is that this conference isn’t a
> large-scale conference with thousands of attendees, dozens of exhibitors,
> and many sponsors.  This is an event that in a normal year attracts 150-160
> attendees.  A very small sandbox.  If you now offer a virtual option, you
> will very likely submarine your onsite attendee and speaker counts.  As
> soon as that option is posted/promoted, we know there will certainly be
> quite a few that decide to make the switch to virtual.  Give a chance and
> it’ll be taken.  Not only does this impact the financial model in the form
> of attendee credits, but it also impacts our on-site preps like room sets
> and in particular food and beverage estimates each day.  We have already
> submitted our f&b minimum numbers to the hotel so we are already committed
> to spending and delivering to these levels.*
>
>
>
> *But there’s good news.   The majority of attendees are concentrated in a
> very specific geographical area.*
>
>
>
> *Year over year, we average a minimum of 80% attendance from the US and
> Canada.  Of those North American attendees, we average over 70% from
> California.  This may sound like a Yogi Berra quip (NY Yankees Hall of
> Famer, known for his unique quotes.  Look him up…) but 100% of the 70% are
> from the Bay Area.  All, with the exception of perhaps 1 or 2, are within
> commuter, walking, or in Mike McKenna’s case, bike riding distance.  This
> includes speakers as well, over 80% are from the local area.  We knew all
> along that we may run into issues with a few speakers that could not attend
> in person because of country/state/company/health restrictions.  And we
> have been preparing to still allow them to present remotely.  But these are
> one-off solutions to accommodate speakers only.  We have heard from a few
> speakers that they cannot present in person and we have let them know
> directly that we will be back in touch with presentation remote
> connectivity.  This week we will also be sending a broadcast speaker note,
> giving everyone the usual speaker requirements and will be using that as a
> way to flesh out anyone else that may  not be able to present in person.
> We’ll then coordinate the remote connectivity option with them
> individually.*
>
>
>
> *Even with the expected drop in attendance, we are confident that the
> event will still be viable.  We have been targeting this as realistically
> being the first face-to-face event for most of us in a very long time.
> This should be a reward in a sense for those that were able/allowed to
> participate in person.  A large part of that reward is the opportunity to
> once again start networking.  It’s a huge component of every IUC event and
> we’re so happy that this will once again take place.*
>
>
>
> *As I said at the beginning, we have a solution!!!*
>
>
>
> *Google will not only be supporting IUC 45 as a Gold Sponsor again this
> year, but they have beyond graciously offered to sponsor the recordings of
> all the Thursday and Friday sessions!  Post event, we will make the
> recordings available to attendees for free and accessible for a fee to
> those that could not attend in person.  After 45-60 days, we will then post
> them to YouTube to be available to the greater community.  We will not
> record the Wednesday tutorials as these are more like training sessions and
> the speakers themselves may get royalties from the content.*
>
>
>
> *Thanks to Rod and Dave from Google, we will be able to outfit each room
> with robo-cams, laptops, mics, and an AV tech with switcher and control
> panel to video record the speaker in room and toggle over to the slide
> presentation and back.  This will not only allow folks to view on demand,
> but it also maintains the structure and integrity for the IUC 45
> face-to-face attendee.*
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
>
>
> Mike
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Mike Narducci
> Director of Meetings and Events
> Boston, MA, USA UTC-04
> +1 781 444 0404 <(781)%20444-0404>; 104
> mike at omg.org
>
>
> *From:* Dominik Röttsches <drott at google.com>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, September 28, 2021 9:18 AM
> *To:* unicode at unicode.org; Mike Narducci <mike at omg.org>; Carol David <
> carol at omg.org>
> *Cc:* rsheeter <rsheeter at google.com>; Peter Constable <
> pconstable at microsoft.com>; Mark Davis <markdavis at google.com>
> *Subject:* Re: IUC 45 remote attendance options required
>
>
>
> Hi again everyone,
>
>
>
> I haven't received any response so far - could you please reply and
> explain how you plan to organize the conference in a way that prevents
> remote attendees from being at a disadvantage. I still find this essential
> with the background of restrictive rules that still exist regarding
> entering the US at the time of the conference, in particular for an
> international organisation like the Unicode consortium?
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
>
>
> Dominik
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 16, 2021 at 5:21 PM Dominik Röttsches <drott at google.com>
> wrote:
>
> Dear Unicode Consortium IUC organizers, dear Mike and Carol,
>
>
>
> I would like to inquire what measures are taken for international
> attendees and speakers to participate in IUC 45 if they are not able to
> travel to Santa Clara.
>
>
>
> Schengen area (≈ European) residents and residents from a list of other
> countries (at least: China, UK, India, Ireland, Brazil, South Africa, Iran)
> are still not allowed entry into the US - as per US policy
> <https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/visa-information-resources/covid-19-travel-restrictions-and-exceptions.html>.
> This means, conference participants restricted by these travel policies are
> unfairly left out if there is no option to contribute to and attend the
> conference in some form of hybrid conference way.
>
>
>
> Please let me know how you plan to address this in a way that prevents
> remote attendees from being at a disadvantage.
>
>
>
> Thank you in advance,
>
>
>
> Dominik Röttsches
>
> Speaker for Session 10, Vector Color Fonts
>
>
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