ISCAS 2020 Becoming a Virtual Conference
First, and more importantly, we hope that you and your families remain healthy and safe. Our thoughts are with those who are facing health problems.
As we announced in March 2020, our priority was to organize a face-to-face event paying keen attention to networking activities, and, accordingly, we postponed the conference to 10-21 October 2020. Due to venue restrictions, these dates were the only option for Q4 2020.
Unfortunately, it is still uncertain that the conference can be run face-to-face with a critical mass of attendees. On the contrary, the current state of the pandemic in large regions of the world, the forecasts made by international organizations, and the risks of new outbreaks in Europe and other areas where the first wave already passed, indicate that an in-person meeting is unfeasible.
We have carefully analyzed the possibility of running the meeting in a hybrid format, with part of the presentations in-person and the rest virtual. In practice, this would have involved organizing two conferences in one, and we finally discarded this option due to financial and logistic reasons.
Altogether, the organization team and the CAS Society Governance have decided to:
Run the Conference as a virtual event during 10-21 October 2020
We understand that this decision will be frustrating for those who planned to travel to Sevilla, and, honestly speaking, this is not the option of our dreams. Nevertheless, from now on, we will concentrate on making ISCAS 2020 a superb virtual event, and, to this end, we need your active engagement.
All the papers are already in place, and they will be made available in Open Preview as planned. However, we will also need that you submit a pre-recorded video of your presentation, no matter the modality of your contribution. In the next days, you will receive instructions regarding formats and procedures.
Going virtual will impact the conference finances. We are still evaluating the additional expenses that virtualization will incur, but we plan to reimburse a part of the registration fees to the attendees. Different options will be given for refund, and the procedures will be informed in due time.
We apologize for any inconvenience this change might cause and please contact the conference secretariat (iscas2020@isbilyatravel.com) with any questions you may have. Also, please continue to visit iscas2020.org for any updates and for further information on the virtual conference format.
Ángel Rodríguez-Vázquez, Manuel Delgado-Restituto and Eduard Alarcón, General Co-Chairs, ISCAS 2020
Amara Amara, President of the CAS Society