From the Virtual Transition Team for EC 2020: Due to concerns regarding the novel coronavirus COVID-19, the 2020 ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC 2020) will be held virtually. This change of format offers exciting new opportunities. This guide can also be found on the EC 2020 webpage.
Overview
June 15 – 19: Mentoring Workshop and Live Tutorial Pre-recording Sessions.
June 22 – July 3: Live EC Paper Pre-recording Plenary Sessions.
July 13: Tutorial Watch Parties, Business Meeting and Poster Session
July 14 – 16: EC Conference (Paper Watch Parties, Paper Poster Sessions, and Plenaries).
July 17 – 22: Workshops.
Philosophy
The planning committee has been hard at work revisioning EC 2020 as a virtual event. The event aims to emphasize opportunities afforded by the virtual format with activities that are intractable in the physical format, but not to recreate aspects of the physical conference experience that are difficult virtually. Some aspects of the event will look similar to a physical conference, while some will be quite different. The desiderata for the selected format are:
- Maximize exposure for EC papers.
- Maximize interaction between community members.
- Allow broad global accessibility.
The organizational team studied the results of many virtual conferences that have already taken place (AAMAS, ASPLOS, EuroSys, ICCP, ICLR, WAGON, among others, as well as the ACM guidelines). Some general rules of thumb are (a) prerecording talks, (b) emphasizing posters, (c) expecting about four hours a day of participation, (d) prime time is 11am-3pm ET.
The planning committee adopted a strategy that allows the minimal commitment level for authors and attendees of presenting and viewing 18 minute talks and attending activities only during the main EC week of July 13-17. However, official EC events will run June 15 to July 24 and the planning committee highly encourages members of the community to enjoy a more relaxed pace where all programming is plenary.
Registration
Registration will be mandatory but complementary with ACM SIGecom membership ($10 Professional / $5 Student) which can easily be completed online. Registration will open on June 1.
Mentoring Workshop and Live Tutorial Pre-recording Sessions
June 15-19: To give junior researchers plenty of time to prepare for the EC conference, the mentoring workshops and tutorial live pre-recording sessions will be held the week of June 15. In addition to the usual activities, junior students will be paired with senior students who will share their EC itinerary and be available for discussions of papers and events in online chat throughout the duration of the EC events. There will be three tutorials, each broken into four 45 minute segments and recorded over several days and with live audiences of EC participants. Students will be able to work together on exercises in between sessions.
Live Paper Pre-recording Plenary Sessions
June 22 – July 3: EC papers will keep the usual 18-minute format. The planning committee highly encourages authors to choose to pre-record their EC talks in live pre-recording sessions. Each session comprises three papers and is followed by a virtual coffee break for discussion between the speakers, coauthors, and attendees. Speakers and attendees are recommended to schedule for 2 hours. These sessions are all plenary and will be scheduled for synergies in topic and preferred timing of the speakers. These sessions begin at regular times:
- US Eastern/China 9:00, 13:00, 17:00, 21:00, 1:00, 5:00.
- US Central/Israel 8:00, 12:00, 16:00, 20:00, 24:00, 4:00.
- US Mountain/Europe 7:00, 11:00, 15:00, 19:00, 23:00, 3:00.
- US Pacific/London 6:00, 10:00, 14:00, 18:00, 22:00, 2:00.
We expect about three sessions a day over the ten weekdays between June 22 and July 3. (Pre-recording sessions are optional but highly encouraged for authors of EC papers.)
EC Conference
July 13-16: July 13 is tutorial day. It will include the EC business meeting and a contributed poster session for breaking results and results from other venues. The main conference runs July 14-July 16 with programming from 9am-5pm Eastern. This programming includes pre-recorded talk watch parties, poster discussion sessions for the papers, live plenary talks, and live highlights beyond EC. The paper and poster discussion sessions will run in two-hour blocks as follows:
Hour 1: 3-5 parallel tracks of watch parties (3 papers each), with realtime chat with the authors.
Hour 2: plenary 1-minute lightning talks for all papers, breakout room for discussion for each paper with poster (a poster is 1-4 slides in PDF). (The lightning talks and poster discussion rooms are optional but highly encouraged for authors of the session’s papers.)
As these watch parties will be in parallel sessions and some may be at times that are hard for some members of the community to attend, the planning committee highly encourages participation in the live pre-recording sessions (June 22-July 3) and all talks will be available for individual viewing in advance of the conference.
EC Workshops
July 17-22: Three workshops will take place on the Friday of EC and the following week. Details for these events are still being worked out by the organizers.
Best Presentation by Student or Postdoctoral Research Award.
The Best Presentation by a Student or Postdoctoral Researcher Award is designed to encourage and acknowledge excellence in oral presentations by students and recent graduates. In addition to an honorarium, this year’s winner will be invited to present in a special session at WINE 2020 with expenses covered by SIGecom. To be considered for the award, the presenter must participate in a live pre-recording session. This year will feature several “fun” categories for video presentations. Audience nominations are requested for creative and fun videos in the categories of: Best Video, Best Cameo by a Child or Pet, Best Special Effects, Best Soundtrack, or Best [Insert Your Nomination Here]. Submit nominations here.
Virtual Transition Team
Virtual aspects of the conference are being coordinated by a Virtual Transition Team appointed by the SIGecom Executive Committee, that in addition to the Executive Committee and the EC 2020 organizing committee includes the following officers:
- Virtual General Chair: Jason Hartline
- Virtual Local Chair: Yannai Gonczarowski
- Virtual Global Outreach Chairs: Rediet Abebe and Eric Sodomka
The team is looking forward to interacting with everyone in the community at an outstanding conference!
Turing's Invisible Hand 