Cosyne Viewing PArties
William Dorrell
Cosyne Viewing Parties
Cosyne is the preeminent computational neuroscience conference, but a variety of factors limit in-person attendance. Cosyne talks are streamed on youtube, but watching days of talks on your laptop is an agonising way to an aneurism. Cosyne is making videos available online, which offers a third way: regional gatherings that provide partial conference benefits at partial cost. This email provides motivation, and information on how to attend a Cosyne Viewing Party or host your own. For current map of viewing parties see: https://shorturl.at/3DHZX
Some Motivation: Costs, visa restrictions, and personal responsibilities can make flying round the world to attend a conference impossible. Further, flights contribute around 2.5% of yearly CO2 emissions (and their proportion of warming is even higher, due to contrails and the altitude of emission), but, unlike most other major sources of emissions, there is no feasible green drop-in replacement for flying. This makes reducing flying a key part of almost all realistic net-zero plans.
The Idea: Viewing Parties will run alongside the main conference in Lisbon. They will allow people to gather, capturing some of the advantages of an in-person conference, while making logistics easier and greener. The details are flexible: at its simplest, it can involve hiring a room and screening the talks for an audience who can then discuss what they see. More elaborate versions might draw people from across a large area (e.g. all of South Africa, or the Eastern US) and host poster sessions, social events, or additional discussions alongside talk screenings. This has already worked for ICML, CCN, and NeurIPS.
Host: Hosting can be easy! Simply book a room at your local institution and screen the talks (syncing your screening with the main meeting isn't necessary if time difference is an issue). Additional efforts that might improve the experience include coffee/food, a poster session, organised social events, or additional panel discussions. To register with us and appear on our map (allowing people to find you) email `dorrellwec at gmail.com' with the following information:
Where will the Cosyne Viewing Party be hosted?
How can people attend?
Contact details - who are you?
(Optional) Information on the additional events, link to a corresponding webpage, or an invitation to bring posters/talks etc.