Non-Local Info for MFPS and QPL 2020

QPL and MFPS 2020 were originally supposed to be co-located in Paris. The Covid'19 pandemic has changed the situation, and the events are now going to take place in the cyberspace.

This page will gather the concrete details for authors and attendees of both conferences.

For everyone

This year, QPL and MFPS happen online. It is free! You only need to register by filling a simple form. We will then proceed to give you the credentials needed to access the conference Slack workspace.

We are using a combination of three tools.

• Slack as the cyber rallying point for general, synchronous and asynchronous interaction between participants throughout the week. In particular, it is intended to be the privileged platform for Q&A sessions.

  See below for a short tutorial !

• Youtube as the repository for talks.
  • MFPS is having purely pre-recorded talks, available all week long on the corresponding channel.
  • QPL's talks are on the other hand going to be streamed according to a fixed schedule, as for a regular, physical event. As a ghostly remains of its Parisian origin, QPL'20's schedule will be based on UTC+2. Nonetheless all talks are going to then stay available on Youtube.
• QPL speakers aiming at live talks will be directed on either Zoom or Cisco: we will set up ad-hoc virtual rooms for their talk, broadcasted to Youtube for everyone to enjoy. [Update: Zoom being known to create problem when livestreamed to Youtube, we shall only be using Cisco]

Short Tutorial for Slack

The discussion for each talk will take place on Slack. Slack is a very easy to use chat / text-based discussion platform that works from your browser and requires no installation – though desktop versions are available should you prefer.

If you registered, you should have received an invitation link (if you have not, ping us and we'll let you in!). Once you have accepted the invitation and registered on the platform you will be able to access the conference channels where the discussion will take place.

We have prepared a short video tour of Slack.

In what follows we provide a shorter textual description of some key information.

When you create your account, we require that you use your real name. After creating your account we recommend that you add your affiliation in the “What I Do” section of your profile, where you may also add a brief sentence or two of a bio or list some topics that fall within your research interests. This will be your virtual “name tag” and help other attendees to know who you are and how to reach you during the conferences.

Each talk has been assigned a separate discussion channel, visible in the sidebar on Slack. This is where discussion for the talks is supposed to take place, and where you can pose any questions or comments for the speakers as you view the talk. If you are unable to follow a talk when it is broadcast live you are encouraged to ask questions in advance, and likewise you may continue to discuss a talk in its channel after it has taken place.

General channels are visible at the top of the channel list, including:

• #-announcements: for general conference-wide announcements. Watch it regularly as the conference unfolds, as this is where any changes, updates, etc., will be advertised as necessary.
• #-coffee-chat: for general chit-chat.
• #-job-opening-ads-etc: any advertisements you would like to broadcast.
• #-pub-social: where you can organise breakout social meetings.

Regarding posts in the channels, if you hover your pointer over any post you should see several icons appear on the right-hand side of it. The most important are:

• A “smiley” icon: to add a tag to post (e.g. a thumbs up, a happy smiley, a green tick mark).
• A speech-bubble icon: to reply specifically to that post / open the thread of replies to that post.
• A “...” icon which gives more options. In particular, if it is your post, you have the opportunity to edit and/or delete it. So don’t hesitate to post and make mistakes/typos, as posts can always be edited if you wish.

Here are some useful conventions while posting:

• When mentioning someone, use “@” before starting typing their name -- Slack should offer you auto-complete.
• Similarly, if you mention channel, start with “#” and Slack will offer you a list of channels for autocomplete.
• You are encouraged to applaud: in Slack you can generate a clapping hand when typing “:clap:”

You can see any posts in which you have been mentioned at the top of the sidebar on the left hand side, where it reads “Mentions & reactions”.

Looking forward to seeing you over on Slack!

For speakers

Pre-recorded talks for both QPL and MFPS are due on May 30th at the latest. The procedure is quite simple:

1. Record a talk (see below for some hints on how to do this). Do not hesitate to deliver a talk shorter than for a live instance: 15-20 minutes for a 30 minutes slot is perfectly fine.
2. Store the file on some online repo (Google Drive, Firefox Send, etc).
3. Make sure to make the file public and send us a link to it. We'll then retrieve it and process it for Youtube.

In the typical case, your talk will then stay on MFPS'20 or QPL'20 channel forever after. In particular, this implies giving us the right to do that... If you have any problem with this, do not hesitate to get in touch.

Some hints on how to make a pre-recorded talk

In its simplest form, recording a talk consists in plugging a microphone, popping up a set of slides in your favorite tool, and lauching a screen+sound recorder. There are plenty of tools to do this, and many people have made reviews.

For instance, the LICS'20 conference is going to happen online: its its information page for authors contains a set of nice instructions.

A simple solution for recording talks might however simply using Zoom. Although it is primarily meant to be used for video-conference, it can also be used for recording videos. And the free version works under Windows, MacOS and Linux. With a camera, it can also give a little video of the speaker's face I the corner if they turn their webcam on, which is nicer to watch than a pure screen capture.

You simply have start a meeting with only you in it, "lock" the meeting (if you like), then press record, screen share, and start talking as if you were in a real meeting (although alone). When you end the meeting, it gives you the option to save the mp4 of the whole thing to your computer. Et voila!

Otherwise, for what they are worth you can find reviews of screen recorders from CNET and TechRadar presenting tools for various platforms.

Finally, if you are a die-hard command-line linux user, you can also simply use the ffmpeg to capture your screen:

ffmpeg -video_size 2560x1440 -framerate 25 -f x11grab -i :0.0 -f alsa -ac 2 -i hw:2 output.mkv