On the format for the EMS Annual Meeting 2022

STATUS: updated 5 August 2022

For onsite participation we will follow the then-valid regulations on travelling and access to large events, enforced by Germany, North Rhine-Westphalia, the City of Bonn and the University of Bonn, and these might impact at short notice how we run the onsite event. Please carefully check which entry restrictions may apply with regard to your home country. For details, see the German regulations on travelling and large events below. As these regulations are susceptible to change, the organizers suggest that you visit these sites regularly if you plan to attend the event as onsite participant.

• European Commission's overview of travel regulations
• Up-to-date information on the German restrictions by the Federal Foreign Office
• Information for visitors by the University Bonn

In short

• We plan the 2022 EMS Annual Meeting as an onsite event at the University of Bonn with an online component. Oral sessions will be run in a fully hybrid format using zoom for all oral presentations, both onsite and online. Poster sessions will have an onsite and an online component: 80% of posters will be physically on display at poster boards at the conference venue, but each for one day only; 20% of poster authors opted for online presentation and these posters will be on display in the poster area of gather.town for the entire week. Also, the onsite poster presenters are encouraged to have the display period extended to the entire week by uploading their poster for display online in gather.town.
• ALL oral presentations – onsite! and online - need to be uploaded to the conference platform at least 24hours in advance of the start of the session. Note that no upload onto the laptop in the lecture room will be allowed for hygiene reasons. Upload starts 9 August 2022.
• In addition to following the oral sessions online in zoom we plan to use gather.town also to stream all talks (plenary & session orals) on this platform.
• All chairpersons of sessions are asked to be onsite at the meeting in Bonn. Two onsite chairpersons need to be nominated by conveners for any one time block of the oral session.
• Note that, should the pandemic situation turn to be challenging in September 2022, we will prepare to be flexible and may have to switch to a full online mode, also at very short notice, using zoom and gather.town as access and presentation platforms.

Online platforms & access

• We are using two platforms: zoom and gather.town; links will be provided from home page. Access will be allowed only to attendees with a valid registration for the EMS2022; you will be asked to login to your CO account with which you registered the first time you access the respective links.
• Attending oral sessions online is possible on both platforms:
• Via gather.town all session from the onsite lecture rooms are streamed into online lecture rooms that have the same name as onsite (HS 1, HS 2, …); however, at this stage this is streaming only, and it is not foreseen that comments and questions put in the chat in gather.town can be transferred live to the onsite lecture room.
• Via zoom: zoom will be used to present all online talks, but also any registered participant can enter zoom to follow the session; the chat in zoom will be monitored by one of the session chairs, and the option to ask a live question (if called by the chair) is given.
• Online oral presenters must use zoom to be able to present.
• Attending poster sessions online
• Following onsite poster session online is not possible.
• All posters that have been uploaded in advance, will be on display in the poster areas on gather.town for the entire week. All onsite poster authors are encouraged to use this opportunity to extend the display time for their poster. The poster areas are divided into four different (but connected) rooms that are named according to the four different author-in-attendance times for onsite poster sessions: “Posters Monday”, “Posters Tuesday”, Posters Wednesday” and Posters “Thursday-Friday”.

In addition, display material can be uploaded from 9 August 2022 and the conference platform offers the opportunity to get in contact with the authors via the commenting tool, from 9 August until 9 October 2022.

Presentation format

• The following presentation types are scheduled in the session programme:
  1. Oral presentations: oral talks will follow the standard format (12 min + 3 min Q&A), while strictly selected solicited talks (one per session) are longer (25 min + 5 min).
  2. Posters: Onsite poster boards will only be available for onsite poster presentations; due to space limitations and to keep larger distances onsite posters will have to be changed each evening, apart from Thursday. Poster sessions (i.e. Poster-authors-in-attendance times) will be run on site, and are scheduled as parallel session. For some of the sessions, in particular large ones that last one full day or more, the poster session will thus be on a different day, in some cases preceding the oral session.
  3. However, authors of all posters – online and onsite – are encouraged to have their poster displayed in the online poster-area in gather.town. For this, please upload the electronic poster as live presentation file (see below) by 29 August 2022.
  4. Poster pitches: Independent of possible poster pitch times already scheduled in some of the oral session parts, all poster authors are invited to upload pre-recorded pitches before the conference to the conference page as display material.
  5. SPARK sessions: Conveners of two sessions eventually implemented the SPARK-format for their session (ES2.3, UP1.7): two longer SPECIAL TRACK solicited talks of 20 min + Q&A, and all other contributions as posters with extended impulse (ES2.3)/ poster pitches (UP1.7) are scheduled. Both SPARK sessions are scheduled in parallel on Monday afternoon.

Pre-uploading: Live presentation and Display material

Two separate types of material should be uploaded to the programme page: a Live presentation file and Display material.

Live presentation upload

• Authors of oral presentations (regardless whether they are presenting onsite or online) are requested to upload their presentation file for the live presentation. The live presentation file must be uploaded at least 24 hours prior to your session's start.
• Authors of poster presentations (regardless whether they are presenting onsite or online) are requested to upload their presentation file so it can be subsequently uploaded to the poster area on the gather.town platform; these posters will be on display for the entire conference week. Please upload the live presentation file until 29 August 2022. The live presentation file will only be shown during the live session. The file is not accessible publicly by registered conference participants.
• The live presentation file can either be uploaded by the contact author (who submitted the abstract) or the nominated presenting author of the abstract.
• Please remember that a paid conference registration (either for on-site participation or online participation) is mandatory for the person uploading the live presentation file in order to access the upload tool.
• While on-site presenters must give a live presentation, online presenters are also requested to present live, but have the option to submit a pre-recorded talk as live presentation file should they be unable to be present due to time-zone differences or an unstable internet connection. Such a pre-recorded presentation must not exceed the scheduled time duration for the talk.
• The live presentation files can be in *.pdf, *.ppt/pptx, *.pps/ppsx, *.png, *.jpg, or *.mp4 format. The file sizes of live presentations are limited to 50 MB per abstract for *.pdf, *.ppt/pptx, *.pps/ppsx, *.png, and *.jpg files, and to 200 MB for *.mp4 video files.

Display materials and commenting

Pre-uploading display material is highly recommended for all types of presentations, irrespective whether they are presented onsite or online. This aims to enable better preparation of sessions by conveners and all interested, and also Q&A and discussions through the commenting tool.

• All authors are encouraged to upload display materials to accompany their abstracts. These can be uploaded from 9 August and will be made available to registered conference attendees during a 2-month period from 9 August to 9 October 2022. Modifications are possible throughout this 2-month period.
• Display materials can be in *.pdf, *.ppt/pptx, *.pps/ppsx, *.png, *.jpg, or *.mp4 format and hosted on the EMS2022 server, or they can be a *.html linked on the EMS2022 website and programme, but hosted on the author's own infrastructure. If *.mp4 files are uploaded, these will be submitted to the EMS2022 Vimeo channel accessible for registered attendees.
• In addition to the display materials, authors can provide a DOI or URL linking to a presentation they have pre-recorded and submitted to portals like YouTube.
• The file sizes of display materials are limited to 50 MB per abstract for *.pdf, *.ppt/pptx, *.pps/ppsx, *.png, and *.jpg files, and to 200 MB for *.mp4 video files.
• If authors opt for the open-access Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), their display materials become openly accessible one month after the conference ends (i.e. from 10 October 2022).
• Display material can be updated and deleted any time during the upload period (9 August – 9 October 2022).
• Registered conference attendees can comment on uploaded display materials through the conference platform during the 2-month period from 9 August to 9 October 2022, unless the abstract authors have opted out of the commenting feature.

Day programme

Apart from Monday, the standard day programme will be from 9:00 to 18:00 (CEST); the sessions on Friday, 9 September 2022 will end by 15:30 (CEST).

• Session overview
  The daily programme for each lecture room will become available on the home page in the week before the conference.