Collaborations Workshop 2020 (CW20) - Online¶
In Practice authors: Rachael Ainsworth (ORCID) and Shoaib Sufi (ORCID)
The Collaborations Workshop (CW) is the annual flagship event of the Software Sustainability Institute. It brings together researchers, developers, innovators, managers, funders, publishers, leaders, and educators to explore and share best practice.
On 5 March - just over three weeks before Collaborations Workshop 2020 (CW20) was due to start in Belfast, Northern Ireland - everything was in place. The programme had been finalised, keynote speakers announced, catering booked and accommodation assigned. There had been some issues - a group from Northern Italy had cancelled because they had been quarantined due to an outbreak of a novel coronavirus. At this point the number of reported cases in the UK was small, but things were moving rapidly. The clear message was that we couldn’t run the event as planned.
CW is a highly interactive event with around 80-100 participants, designed to facilitate meeting as many new people as possible. With a global pandemic forcing us to stay at home, could we successfully recreate the experience online and with only three weeks to prepare? Given the amount of work that had already been put into organising the event, the decision was made on 10 March to move the event online and stick with the original dates: 31 March - 2 April.
Here is how we did it. Note, this Event Organisation Guide In Practice write up takes place just before our decision to go online and covers the steps in the Event Project Stage of the main Event Organisation Guide. We do not go into details about the face to face CW20 event that was planned. This indepth write up runs until the resources after the workshop were made available.
For a shorter case study that covers the move in summary please refer to the blog post CW20: how to move an event online in three weeks.
