CW21 Infrastructure

As our primary CW21 Goals and Objectives were to build off of CW20 and focus on improving aspects around socialising, networking, accessibility and inclusion, we kept much of the CW20 Infrastructure. However, we also ended up using many additional platforms to achieve our goals.

Platforms

We used the following platforms to help us organise and run the event.

Event management

  • GitHub: We used a private GitHub repository to project manage the event, using Issues and Project boards to keep track of what needed to be done and our progress.
  • SSI website: The CW21 event page was hosted on the Institute website.
  • Mailchimp: We used Mailchimp to set up a registration of interest form to notify our audience of CW21 updates and when event registration opened.
  • Eventbrite: We created a CW21 Eventbrite page to manage registrations, fee processing and send email notifications to registrants.
  • Bit.ly: We generate a lot of links during a CW and we used Bit.ly to manage them, make them more user-friendly and monitor engagement/clicks.
  • Google Forms: We conducted the calls for sponsorship, financial assistance, lightning talks, mini-workshop and demo sessions, and participant-led social programme activities using Google Forms.
  • Figshare: Through our partnership with Figshare, we were once again able to manage conference outputs such as lightning talk slides through a Figshare conference portal.
    • Lightning talk presenters, mini-workshop facilitators, and participants who wanted to generate DOIs for their CW21 outputs were able to submit directly to the portal using this form.
  • uCONFLY: We used the SSI’s unconference resource management system uCONFLY to manage collaborative Google documents for the interactive sessions.
    • Following our procedure from CW20, we used uCONFLY purely as an admin tool by creating the templates for the Discussion Session, Collaborative Ideas session, Mini-workshop and demo sessions, and Hack Day ideas, and generated all of the needed instances ahead of time ourselves.
  • Google Sheets: We collated the uCONFLY generated documents via Google Sheets (see this example spreadsheet) which we linked to in each day’s collaborative note-taking document/agenda (see section on Collaborative Documenting below for details).

Video conferencing

  • Zoom: We used Zoom as our primary video conferencing and management platform, as we had the most experience with it and it had the best performance, scalability and functionality out of the many platforms we tested.
    • We attended many of the CSCCE Tools Trials which tested and compared features from a variety of virtual conferencing platforms, including for QuiqoChat, Etherpad with video and Wonder, and found that Zoom still best met our needs.
    • The ability to create and manage breakout rooms is essential for our interactive sessions such as the Discussion session, Collaborative Ideas session and Hack Day.
    • The added functionality in Zoom allowing participants to self-select their own breakout rooms was a game changer (we did not have this for CW20, which made breakout room assignments tedious).
    • We had six professional/education Zoom Host accounts in total to accommodate parallel sessions: one for the main/plenary room (where the Discussion session, Collaborative Ideas session and Hack Day were managed in breakout rooms), plus five for the mini-workshop sessions which took place in parallel outside of the plenary room.
    • We also attended a Zoom safety drill hosted by the CSCCE to test out the various security features available on Zoom, and to role play what it would be like to have to report and evict a bad actor and then deal with the fallout.
  • YouTube: One of our goals was to increase opportunities for community members who were unable to attend the event to engage with the discussions, and one way we facilitated this was by live streaming the keynote presentations and panel via the SSI YouTube channel.
    • YouTube was also used to share the session recordings after the event.
  • Restream: We needed to stream from Zoom to both YouTube and our live transcription service Otter.ai (see Accessibility section below) simultaneously, which required the use of a third party streaming application (as Zoom could only stream to one service at a time).
  • RemotelyGreen: RemotelyGreen was used for a speed networking social hour as part of our social programme.
  • GatherTown: GatherTown was used for a quiz as part of our social programme.
  • Mozilla Hubs: Mozilla Hubs was used for a virtual meetup as part of our social programme.

Accessibility

  • Otter.ai: We used Otter.ai for live transcription and captioning during the event, as well as to generate subtitles for the session recordings in order to improve accessibility.
    • This required Otter.ai Business subscriptions for each Zoom Host account used in running the event.
    • Some feedback we received during the event, was that participants appreciated the live transcription because it meant that they were able to focus on the presentations without having to take their own notes.

Chat system

  • Slack: We used Slack as our primary chat platform, as it persists outside the meeting room which is helpful for maintaining access to resources shared, referencing discussions and facilitating community engagement.
    • We created practical channels for event organisation and communication, such as a #help-desk channel for participants to direct their technical issues to and #introductions for participants to introduce themselves.
    • Private backchannels were created for the Code of Conduct Committee, Zoom hosts, SSI staff, and Hack Day judges.
    • Participants were able to create their own channels for their own use such as for their Discussion session groups and Hack Day teams.
    • Because of their success during CW20, we created more informal channels such as #pets-at-cw21, #kids-at-cw21 and #outside-my-window-cw21 for sharing photos of pets, children and working from home environments during lockdown.
  • Sli.do: We obtained a professional subscription of Sli.do to offer another pathway for audience Q&A and engagement, which added an interactive element for participants and also allowed them to ask questions anonymously (and moderated by the organisers).

Collaborative documenting

  • Google Docs: We used Google Docs as our primary platform for collaborative note-taking and keeping everyone synchronised.
    • We created a main document for each day which contained that day’s agenda (which linked to other sections of the doc with information and space for note-taking and questions for each session), connection details and other important links, participation guidelines, guidance and instructions, roll call, space for feedback, and a disclaimer in the header asking participants not to share any links publicly during the event (see the collaborative document for CW21 Day 1 here).
    • We added a license (CC BY 4.0) to all of the Google Docs generated for CW21 so that participants would know how they could be used going forward.
    • Although we chose Google Docs because it has a low barrier to accessibility (no need to log in or register and you do not need to know specific syntax or markdown language), participants using screen readers or voice control had difficulty using it (we empowered them to use any platform that worked best for their needs, and HackMD seemed to work better for these cases).

Resources

We created the following infrastructure resources to help us manage the event.

Organiser-facing

  • A spreadsheet for planning the event and keeping track of registrations and budget.
  • An index of links to documentation and event resources for organisers to easily navigate on the day.
  • A duties roster with assignments, lists and descriptions of the roles and responsibilities.
  • A spreadsheet for the mini-workshop and demo sessions assignments with links to the Zoom rooms, notes documents, and live transcriptions for the parallel sessions.
  • Zoom instructions for the hosts and co-hosts of the parallel sessions.
  • A checklist for the event chair of what tasks need to be done before and at the start of the event (such as a reminder to send the connection details, assign co-hosts, record the event and take a group photo).
  • A checklist for the event chair of how to set up the live stream during the event (a complicated procedure involving steps in Zoom, YouTube, Otter, and Restream).
  • A speaker guide to help the keynote speakers with their recordings.
  • A spreadsheet to facilitate Hack Day judging and scoring.
  • A spreadsheet for keeping track of prizes and winners.
  • Instructions for processing the session recordings, generating subtitles and publishing the videos on YouTube.
  • A spreadsheet to facilitate and track processing the session recordings (for example, with information on the start and end times for splitting recordings, locations of cover and subtitle files, session information, and YouTube metadata).

Participant-facing

  • Collaborative notes documents for each day of the event (with agenda) to guide participants through the event, provide another pathway to engagement and compile questions, notes and outputs from the event:
  • Collaborative notes documents for the icebreaker sessions with prompts and space to share responses.
  • A template document for the Discussion group session and 26 instances generated in uCONFLY.
  • A template document for the Collaborative Ideas session and 26 instances generated in uCONFLY.
  • A template document for the Mini-workshop and demo sessions and 10 instances generated in uCONFLY.
  • A template document for the Hack Day pitches and 26 instances generated in uCONFLY.
  • A spreadsheet to collate the Discussion group session topics and documents, and facilitate group sign-up.
  • A spreadsheet to collate the Collaborative Ideas session documents and facilitate voting.
  • A spreadsheet to collate the Hack Day pitch documents.
  • A spreadsheet to facilitate Hack Day teams registration and sign-up.
  • A feedback form.