Going Online: How we organised the first ever virtual csvconf

Wed, 01 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A brief history about csvconf
Weighing the decision to hold csv,conf,v5 online

Moving online - The challenge
Moving online - The opportunity

Planning an online conference

Organizing Team
Selecting Talks
Creating a Schedule
Tickets and Registration
Code of Conduct
Communication via Slack
Picking a video conference platform

Zoom Concerns
Crowdcast Benefits
Crowdcast Challenges

#Commallama
A big thank you to our community and supporters
Looking Ahead - The future of csv,conf

A brief history

csv,conf is a community conference that brings diverse groups together to discuss data topics, and features stories about data sharing and data analysis from science, journalism, government, and open source. Over the years we have had over a hundred different talks from a huge range of speakers, most of which you can still watch back on our YouTube Channel.

csv,conf,v1 took place in Berlin in 2014 and we were there again v2 in 2016 before we moved across the Atlantic for v3 and v4 which were held in Portland, Oregon in the United States in 2017 and 2019. For csv,conf,v5 we were looking forward to our first conference in Washington DC, but unfortunately, like many other in-person events, this was not going to be possible in 2020.

People have asked us about our experience moving from a planned in person event to one online, in a very short space of time, so we are sharing our story with the hope that it will be helpful to others, as we move into a world where online events and conferences are going to be more prevalent than ever.

The decision to take the conference online was not an easy one. Until quite late on, the question csvconf organizers kept asking each other was not “how will we run the conference virtually?” but ‘will we need to cancel?’. As the pandemic intensified, this decision was taken out of our hands and it became quickly clear that cancelling our event in Washington DC was not only the responsible thing to do, but the only thing we could do. csvconf's #CommaLlama

Jo Barratt on The Carpentries

Going Online: How we organised the first ever virtual csvconf

A brief history