has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

@joe.wright set the channel purpose: Nime Delivery and Ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

Having all these conversations in text form makes me wonder why there is not a NIME forum - for all year round discussions? I'm somewhat new to the community, but has that ever been discussed? It would also by default open up to non-academics in a way a conference will always struggle to do.

It's been discussed in NIME town halls, about how to synthesize, and document these important 'in-between' discussions that are not captured in e.g. proceedings etc. So, yes, it's a good idea for sure...

Yes, it is a good idea. Perhaps it is time to set up something after this conference. What would be the best tool? Slack? Any volunteers to run and maintain it?

Is this slack permanent or will it expire?

Not sure Slack is the best tool/venue for long conversations. Not just because it only keeps the 10k most recent messages, but also because in my opinion it is not good for keeping track of a topic and the discussion around it,

[ unless you start a new channel for each topic ]

[and pay for more threads]

Additionally, it would be nice to encourage this type of interaction during future physical conferences. It is not uncommon for many participants to be online and in front of laptops during presentations. It allows for moderators to screen and curate questions. Also, helps in associating names and faces

Agreed

Yes, I think it works very well, so definitely something to use also in future physical (or possibly physical-virtual) conferences.

Curation of questions is super helpful, particularly in ensuring fairness of who gets to ask...

But: what would be a good way to encourage interaction outside of the conferences?

I think a forum is a great idea. The drawback of Slack is that you have to pay for it if you go over 10k messages so history quickly evapourates.

(Interesting how some of the earliest things we did with the internet are slowly coming back into style ...)

I think the Discourse forum software would be great such as found over at Lines: https://llllllll.co/

there is also Rocket chat for those who like the slack interface but don't want a proprietary platform

the live-coding community migrated from slack to rocket a couple years ago

though, i agree that that forum-vs-chat style interface is it's own question - i don't find chat interfaces great for discoverability of conversations-past

Sounds like we need a forum/chat/communication officer to look into what would be a good solution. Volunteers welcome! :thinking_face:

may be starting a discord server...

I haven't used Discord, and I understand it doesn't delete old messages the way Slack does, but I am not sure if a chat is the right way for long-term conversations.

I was wondering: what about a subreddit?

Agreed with everything being said here. I think it should be a priority to scaffold something lasting (whatever that means today) and accessible, and especially make sure there is no limit on message history. Nothing more frustrating than trying to locate that thing someone said last week in a Slack thread only to find it vanished. Particularly with these kind of discussions, being able to point to what others have said and keep a record of the dialogue is crucial (imo).

the toplap conversation style at https://forum.toplap.org/ is quite nice

That seems to be based on http://discourse.org, which is also a paid service.

@niccolo.granieri, reddit could work though it would need to be either regularly moderated or set to restricted access.

What's the server setup of the http://nime.org site (if there is a server setup)? You can run forum software like Flarum on shared servers.

I think another benefit of a forum could be that there's not that much time pressure on the NIME-conference-week, since there's room for discussion and exchange of projects, footage and research throughout the year! Really looking forward to this. What is nice about slack is that there's a list of participants, that the NIME-community is visible all times.

I think toplap funds through crowdfunding via liberapay

http://nime.org is jekyll-based and located at github https://github.com/NIME-conference/nime-website - @charles.martin knows more. Could possibly set up a solution there.

Ah, that's what I suspected. If server space were available though there are forum options (just hosting a subdomain like http://forum.nime.org for example so the main domain could stay mirrored to GH)

We could also look at something like Mastodon...

I guess it would depend if Mastodon has enough traction in the nime community really.

i was under the impression that mastadon had character limits and was more of a twitter substitute? Also re toplap/discourse, it seems that Discourse can be self hosted for free (but offers managed hosting at subscription pricing)

also what looks nice is you can pay a one time price for someone to set up your self-hosted free instance for you - https://www.literatecomputing.com/discourse-installation-packages/

Ircam forum switched to a self-hosted discourse server, which works very well: https://discussion.forum.ircam.fr/

+1 for a NIME forum. And +1 for Discourse... I would just like to be _*that guy*_ and say whatever solution is put forward, it should be a free and open source product. For my first NIME, I was disappointed to see that the conference was reliant on Slack, Zoom, YouTube and Microsoft CMT -- when there are equivalent non-proprietary alternatives.

@matthew.d.hughes what's a _good_ equivalent non-proprietary alternative to each of those?

@g.moro Rocket.Chat and Jitsi are very mature replacements for Slack and Zoom. Great in my experience. Not sure on a CMT but I?d argue since NIME isn?t really using the social features of YouTube, and the listings are private, then any plain-old video hosting would do just fine - even right on the NIME2020 site itself. For forums there is Discourse which is widely used and has been mentioned already in this thread.

Hi @matthew.d.hughes From the beginning we initially wanted to use open source tools, but we quickly realised after research and initial tests that this might not be wholly possible. After a brief discussion we realised that for NIME2020 we wanted access to be our upmost priority, and thus we had to chose our tools keeping this in mind. As far as Zoom goes, we looked at Big Blue Button and Jitsi in particular, but without access to our campus, we had no way of testing either properly. We also quickly discovered that BBB was not able to provide rooms for 100 or more people and that Jitsi's accessibility paled in comparison to Zoom's. We ended up settling for Zoom and Slack because both seem to be ahead of other platforms on this front. Given more time, and without the lockdown, we may have been able to do something that was more in line with an open source ethic, and we?re sorry this hasn?t been possible this year! Regarding the other tools you mentioned, there are separate reasons. We chose Youtube because of its reliability. We knew that we would have been streaming and re-streaming content to provide the widest global access, so we decided to pick the most reliable tool we knew. Speaking of CMT instead, the choice was purely economic: at that point, we didn't know how much funding we would have had from our University and we decided to go with a free and tested tool recommended by the community. Having gone a bit in depth into the individual choices that led to the NIME2020 platform choices, I think there is something else to be said. Both @joe.wright and I are lovers and adopters of free and open source free software: we use Pd, Supercollider, Faust and have contributed/distributed open source software in our careers. This also leads us to understand the nature of open source free software. We felt that organising NIME2020 using free and open source software whilst trying to juggle lecturing, PhD completions and research was not a risk we were willing to take. We would have loved to have the time to dedicate to such an endeavour, but we believe that this is for future NIMEs to explore. However, we want to put together some documents to evaluate our conference planning from an accessibility point of view. If you yourself are aware of any tools that we might have missed, or you have any experience with interactive, accessible online events with 300+ people, we?d be very grateful for any comments, solutions or tips that can be added to that document. This way, we can pool our knowledge and put that towards the successful delivery of any future conferences online. Thanks!

@niccolo.granieri Thanks for the thorough response! Organisation has been great so far, and I understand all of your considerations for choosing these platforms. I guess I just wanted to bring it up in this thread because the discussion is focused on choosing a platform for a longer-term messaging/meeting/sharing space online. I assume whoever takes up the task of creating such a space wouldn?t be under the same time and financial pressures as you have been organising the virtual conference. Cheers

Thanks @niccolo.granieri for the explanation of selecting tools and systems for the conference. I think many of us are active open source advocators (and open everything else too, for that matter). It would be great if you could write this up so that we can include it in the NIME cookbook (https://nime.gitbook.io/conference-cookbok/). And, yes, @matthew.d.hughes we can be more flexible when we are thinking about developing the extended conference ecosystem, but we are still in a situation where the community is volunteer-based and funded by ourselves. So whatever we come up with needs to be _sustainable_ in every meaning of the word.

@f.morreale just presented a hot paper he wrote with @abi @a.mcpherson @p.stapleton and Marcelo Wanderley. It was a call to discussion and I think this could be a good #channel to keep this discussion in a more collective way, what do you think?

Good point @laurel.pardue. How could we work on shifting the center of our discussions around european culture, maybe allowing us to perceive the embedded eurocentric approach of most of the NIME papers and recognizing other centers like african, north-american, south-american, asian? Has anyone seen a paper here grounded on a african culture? Any NIME based on traditional South American music paradigms?

For those of us at NIME last year, there was a wonderful presentation on the history of NIMEs in Latin America. There was a lot of great work that many of us were unfamiliar with. It was a refreshing reminder of what we miss due to the unintentional focus and bias towards American and European advances https://www.nime.org/proceedings/2019/nime2019_paper044.pdf.

Should NIME also aim to have a bespoke award to authors coming from underrepresented groups? an equivalent to the Pamela Z award but for BAME authors

We discussed this when we founded the Pamela Z award in 2018. The reason why we didn't make this about identity and rather made it about work was because giving someone an award for their identity and not what they do slides pretty quickly into tokenism, and often doesn't feel like an award at all and reinforces imposter syndrome.

@abi is the Pamela Z award open to people promoting minorities i.e. not just women? My impression from the 2019 presentation was it was directed specifically at women.

@abi just re the server for http://nime.org, it's a static setup hosted on https://www.netlify.com with the papers stored in an AWS bucket. I'd be in favour of having a discourse, but, as you suggested, keeping the static core website is probably good for now. The feeling last year was that we wanted to move away from a shared hosting solution because the previous wordpress site had various problems over the years.

The Pamela Z award recognises researchers promoting and addressing diversity within the NIME community.

Personally, coming from an underrepresented group myself (I'm Mexican), I don't think it would be tokenizing. I did have the same impression as Laurel, but is good to know that the Pamela Z award recognizes researches from all backgrounds

Btw, Charles explains the http://nime.org setup a little more in this video he made for the ecosystem workshop: https://youtu.be/8p5HJh-DwBk

Maybe the NIME website needs to do a better job of explaining what the award is about. @a.r.jensenius, maybe this is possible?

I didn't understand your point @abi, I believe @juan.jpma mentioned to have an award for the quality of the works circumscribed to BAME, just as Pamela Z is circumscribed to Women. And as far as I understand gender, it is also a question of identity, isn't it?

As mentioned above, the Pamela Z award is not circumscribed to women.

oh, didn't see that post

@a.r.jensenius @abi It was going to the NIME website just now where I realized it was probably less about promoting women and more about diversity. While the website could be strengthened, more I'd say, whenever it is presented this year, it'd be good to make it more clear that it isn't a female specific award. It definitely came across that way at last year's presentation.

As much as I'd love to see more women winning things at NIME, I'd also like to see more BAME inclusion.

I think what we need is a team of BAME NIME community members to come up with what that should look like.

I really admired an approach like Bela's sponsorship, to pay for the subscription for underrepresented groups. I don't believe I will be able to participate in future NIME conferences if they keep on happening as they happened before COVID-19 virtualization. Brazilian academics don't usually have access to funding for conferences, and I'm even not part of a University anymore. Keeping a virtual instance of the conference is also a good action for inclusion.

@abi I'd be happy to help coordinate with the relevant steering committee member for disseminating a wider call to action within the NIME community. @a.r.jensenius perhaps you could orient me towards that?

@tragtenberg Totally agree. I've also been really excited by some of the great features of an online conference that would be great to carry forward - recorded video presentations with captions, for example.

Yes, captions really help me to understand english in different accents! Are there any other inclusive principles in subtitling?

I think that's great about captions is that they're an example of an inclusive technology that benefits *everyone* - it makes oral presentations available to deaf people, but makes the text understandable at one's own pace which is beneficial to all of us

If you don't mind, I am bringing this conversation here so it makes it easier for other people to join in. I believe that having philosophical or sociological approaches to NIME doesn't mean that everyone has to include these perspectives in their papers and researches, what I understood from @f.morreale presentation was to have a more inclusive approach to researches with these backgrounds, and having other longer paper formats would do that fine, did you mean that, Fabio?. I also wanted to publish a paper last year a paper that needed to have some new philosophic concepts but I had to oversimplify it to fit into this conference.

I think captions are great for everyone! Definitely something we need to consider for future NIMEs too!

@juan.jpma Yes, let us have a chat about this!

Just an amusing side note on slack and emojis (that feels appropriate for a discussion of BAME), thumbs up of different color get counted separately. Make of that what you will. :slightly_smiling_face:

just thinking a bit more about the ongoing text parts of our ecosystem. Potentially hosting our own forum could be a way of keeping some of this text energy going in between conferences. It's also a bit concerning to rely on Google Groups for our mailing list, maybe a good forum could take the pressure off that and even replace it. One natural choice emerging from the above discussion is to host a https://www.discourse.org/ instance-- https://github.com/discourse/discourse under GPL2--- we could probably get away with a pretty low end server to host it, e.g., a $10-15 per mo. digital ocean droplet. So I guess 180USD per year. Sounds like fun, but also sounds like we might need a few extra web officers who might be game to try something like this out! :smile: (personally, I'm just starting my discourse journey---using it as my course's discussion forum this semester!)

> Sounds like fun, but also sounds like we might need a few extra web officers who might be game to try something like this out!  Yes, volunteers are welcome!

sure, these inclusive approaches that help everyone are the best

I would happily get involved but I might have to abandon other officing positions :smile:

@joe.wright has renamed the channel from ?nime-delivery-and-ecosystem? to ?nime-access-and-ecosystem?

The racial/ethnical issue in an international conference is something that needs some further definitions. Usually race is something defined by how racism is defined in a region, and the terms may differ from place to place. Someone white in Brazil is probably seen as Latino in the US, in Norway may be perceived in another way and so on... I like in our context the discussion around underrepresentation, has anyone a further study in these issues? What are our underrepresented groups?

This is a good question to put to the community, I think we should be operating on the identities that people give to themselves rather than trying to apply identities, because as you say these really differ depending on many factors

Yes, it would be interesting to have a survey to the community

One more positive thing about the captioning (and possible captioning also in future NIMEs), is that it could possibly also help non-English speakers to understand more by using auto-translation features. This reminded me about the Helsinki Initiative on Multilingualism in Scholarly Communication https://www.helsinki-initiative.org/

@tragtenberg great points. Bringing up the lack of recognition of work from South America and what systems permit such eurocentric focuses in our paper tomorrow [session 12]: https://7e5d27bc-3c64-44f3-a7d1-c453ac411593.filesusr.com/ugd/f48bdc_4a162859c48d4f97947020d47e6ff0cc.pdf

I have dealt a bit with discourse for other projects. I could probably help with this.

just had a chat with Alexander about drafting a survey to be sent around the wider community at the end of the conference, if anyone has comments, feedback or wants to join me on drafting it, please send me a DM

We?ll make sure to put lots of detail in the cookbook about this, we could have prepared better for the captioning, and I?m sure @enquiries and @julia would have some great advice to pass on too. They?ve been really patient with us!

has joined #nime-access-and-ecosystem

the captioning is also useful to trace back the Q&A session much better in general.

Thanks Joe :slightly_smiling_face: is @a.r.jensenius referring to the pre-made captions within the videos or the live captioning that we?re providing for the Q&A etc? For us as live captioners we always find that non-native English speakers find the captions helpful in following what?s being said, in addition to anyone with hearing loss. I understand that the videos were captioned by editing YouTube?s autocaptions, I have noticed some instances where it obviously didn?t understand the speaker?s accent very well, which is an issue with auto translation tools

I'm really looking forward to having a throughout-the-year-NIME-platform. For me, it feels like this has a lot to do with inclusion too: NIME is a very important social meeting place for the stuff I'm making as a maker. I'm really sad that it might be six years now for NIME to be back in Europe again... :disappointed: Traveling to the other side of the world might not be an option for me (and I bet there's more people that cannot afford the trip and normally wait for the conference to travel to a closer part of the world to them, like @tragtenberg was already posting about). A forum would spread the moments for sharing knowledge over the year, and I think some researches would even benefit from being shared asychronously and not having to wait till the NIME week..? Another question I would like to pose to the organizers of NIME, but first a big shoutout to you, organizers, for making the conference going in such a smooth way so far, many compliments to you!! And now the question: have there been any considerations to organize the next NIME in Europe again, since there's not any opportunity to meet in real live this year? Just posing it, because I'm curious and I notice that I feel a bit disconnected from the community at the moment, amplified by knowing that I might only see you all great people again after three years from now... Thanks in advance for the answers/replies/comments, etc.

Thanks for your comments and suggestions! It has from the beginning been important to move NIME between continents to ensure that it is a truly international conference. So many conferences say that they are international, but mainly move between (Western)-Europe and USA/Canada. That said, this year's experience has definitely opened our eyes for how things can be done differently. It is quite clear that having an online presence would be important, even when we (hopefully) get back to being able to travel again. We may also consider having conference hubs around the world, to allow for a combination of physical and virtual gathering.

@a.r.jensenius good idea to start thinking about meetings like intra-continental/local NIME-hubs. And I think, as said, you're doing a great job with this first online edition of NIME. It seems like a logical thing for us as a community to start consider new ways of conveying our projects, starting right now at this online edition. I expect the discussion to just have started. Thanks again for making NIME possible this year!

This is a great thread! Regarding geographical reach, inclusivity, and accessibility, some organisations have tested interesting pre-pandemic options that might be worth looking at. Performance Studies Internationl in 2015 replaced the model of a single annual meeting with a series of smaller gatherings, including a 2015 edition entitled "Fluid States" "curated by Croatia-based board member Marin Bla?evi? and Australia-based board member Bree Hadley, and co-conceived by New Zealand-based board member Dorita Hannah. Fluid States used a website as a primary waystation to link the disparate activities occurring around the world during that year. Such a complicated series of events involved an inordinate amount of labor and coordination at a scale that the organization had never previously attempted. Fluid States opened possibilities for PSi members to participate locally in an international project. Participants at relatively small island sites theoretically could dialogue with those engaged in major metropolitan centers located elsewhere in an effort to facilitate new conversations about how performance might matter in ways that a singular frame could not encompass. This large-scale logistical effort corresponds with many scholars who have interrogated municipal, national and regional rubrics as grounds of analysis. Indeed, critical examinations of such keywords have animated the field as scholars think about how such often-naturalized terms reflect and demand certain performances." We're in a different situation five years later, and are learning fast from the current NIME, but efforts like these might be worth referencing? Dorita gives a PSi overview at http://www.critical-stages.org/19/how-psi-works-the-practice-of-performance-studies/

Apologies for prolixity - it's a beautiful winter morning with resonance from the last concerts firing my catch-up with the thread. Another maybe useful precedent, regarding reach beyond the "usual suspect" countries, was that of the Vida - Art & Artificial Life competition's founding of a Production Incentive Award (VIDA ran from 1999-2016). We realised after a few VIDA yeears that productions from countries of keen interest (including for our Telefonica sponso), notably Spain, Portugal, and Latin America, were constantly eclipsed by the much more "polished" (but sometimes questionably interesting) outputs of well-resourced labs/ artists/ organisations elsewhere. So to open up the field, we allocated a specific award to candidates on the basis of a concept/ sketch/ model to be realised. This led to embedding the artists at times in well-heeled environments, and/ or taking workshops and artists to places they'd not usually go to, to nurture new interests and open up the field. It obviously required resourcing via VIDA, but completely changed and enriched the scope of works we witnessed, within just a few years.

Just wanted to echo a couple of points made here and elsewhere, particularly in Amble and Shelly?s presentation yesterday, that are also relevant to Dianne?s point above. The length and schedule of the conference format can itself be quite excluding, as not everyone is able to take part in 12-hour days, several days in a row, without having to ?miss out? on some potentially important events/talks, and when everything that?s going on here is this exciting, that?s a shame! It?s something I?ve experienced this year as someone with caring responsibilities which have overlapped with this week. This isn?t something that is specific to NIME, and was also a big topic of conversation at CHI 2019, as far as I remember. I think the move on-line has gone some way to addressing some of these issues, for example being able to re-watch the talks and follow the discussions asynchronously, but it?s still a lot of content to catch up on and it feels easy to miss out on things as the conversations move so quickly! My point here isn?t a criticism to the NIME organising committee who I think have done a wonderful job of scheduling and curating to fit everything in, especially with such a short time-frame to move it online. However I am interested in talking about what future alternative conference formats might look like, e.g. smaller, more frequent, localised conferences and year-round online sharing of research. In particular, I?d be interested to hear any counterpoints - for example would such an alternative format end up excluding other people, who might already be well-served by the current format? For what it?s worth, I am personally super impressed with how ?conference-like? NIME has felt this year despite the huge challenges the organising committee have faced, and really inspired by the many conversations taking place this week, thanks everyone!

Yes, thanks for raising this issue. I have also experienced challenges with participating in 12-hour days. It is easier when travelling somewhere (although still exhausting). It would be very interesting to hear more about how you think a future conference could look like. I am not sure that going entirely online from now on would be the best solution. After all, some of the joy of NIME is also to be able to test/touch things, and explore music/installations at higher fidelity than what Zoom allows for. But would it be possible to think about a combination of an online asynchronous conference part (before and after) in addition to a shorter physical event? And if so, how can we make this into a good experience for everyone?

lenght of physical events is also a tricky one. Out of environmental reasons, I prefer train travel now and for shorter physical events, that becomes less feasible, given the ratio travel time/event time. Although of course I'll try to organise additional things around shorter events. The main point being: shorter physical events, prompt for more short flights by people, which is not a good thing from an environmental perspective. In that sense, one main physical location, with local hubs where the conference is mirrored or locally expanded might help.

Yes, I think the idea of local/regional hubs could be interesting, and would support much less long-distance travelling. It would also require additional logistics and someone that are willing to take on the work, though...

true

I completely agree about the joy of NIME being the opportunity to explore the demonstrations and installations, which is something we?d really miss out on from going fully online. However there have been plenty of talks in the paper sessions this year that (in my opinion) have worked just as well as an online remote talk with follow up discussion on slack, as they have previously in physical conference spaces. I think from that point of view a hybrid approach could work, with anything that can feasibly be presented online, being online, and everything else being prioritised for whatever form the physical conference takes? The caveat to that I suppose is acknowledging that any time we?re meeting in a physical space, there are people who might miss out due to geographical or access reasons. If anything comes up in those face-to-face meetings that?s relevant to the wider community, then it?s worth thinking about how that can be shared later so that no-one who should be part of the conversation is totally left out. (Sorry, slightly rambly brain dump there but hope that makes sense)

Yes, thanks, I think these are excellent points @j.harrison. One thing that could work, though, would be to have a way of keeping discussions more connected to the papers/presentations. Now everything is on top of each other in the channels. Creating one channel per paper may not be ideal, but it is worth exploring possibly other communication tools that would allow for keeping the discussions "together" for each contribution.

Perhaps a daunting thought but it is not altogether unlikely that a physical event will not be feasible next year. We hear a lot of discussion about this here in Japan which has had to postpone the 2020 Olympics and may have to cancel the 2021 event. With regards to duration of a physical event, I think it would be a mistake to make it shorter as many people have to travel from afar to attend and the travel becomes even more wasteful if it is for a very short event. While it is really nice to travel and attend an exciting event like NIME, I think the current year's event has demonstrated that at least part of the conference can work well online (no doubt this has meant a heroic effort this year), and it is really important to find ways to reduce the frequency of air travel.

After the introduction of the music proceedings last year (https://www.nime.org/music/), we (finally) have the infrastructure in place for having a central archive referencing all former NIME performances (a recording archive is more tricky, many performances have been recorded, but we do not have a central location of all these files, unfortunately). But we need help to go through previous conference programme notes to collect all the data and massage it into the right format. Help wanted!:glitch_crab::pray::skin-tone-3:

Are we having a 'town hall' this year, or is THIS the town hall?

Yes, we are having a town hall session at the end. But, I think this space is a much better space for discussions and reflections!

or the #general-feedback channel

Really good points and discussion here. I?m really loving the pre-recorded videos - the presentations have all been great and, as mentioned above, the ability to watch async has been so valuable. Additionally, the timekeeping has benefited with minimal overruns, noone cut short, no projector/sound issues, and no failed embedded videos! Plus some presenters may be relieved to concentrate on the conference with only the q&a to think about. These videos take time to put together so props to all presenters for their efforts. Maybe this has already been suggested in a thread elsewhere but I really hope the pre-recorded format and remote option persists in future, even when NIME goes back to an in-person event. Videos could be played (and streamed) to audiences followed by a mixture of local and remote questions. The slack discussion has given space for these q&as to continue and it?s also facilitated reflection on the conference as it unfolds - and organisers have done a great job to immediately act on this feedback. As Jacob commented above, I?m genuinely getting the conference buzz although the social side is noticeably absent. To that end there?s a media centre in Bristol called the watershed where they have developed a https://www.watershed.co.uk/venue-hire/live-from-watershed, it?s a webvideo chat thing where you are paired up at random for 5 mins with another conference attendee before being introduced to someone new. It?s kind of like chat roulette (but without the bad stuff). I promise it?s genuinely much better than I?ve made it sound! Obvs too late for this now but I expect similar tools to be emerging now and it would be so nice to facilitate those serendipitous encounters!

Along the lines of this discussion, I agree with @marije that the multi-hub conference scenario may be a terrific solution. @a.r.jensenius, the paper shared by @anna.xambo in the NIME ecosystem workshop padlet ["Grounding the ICMC" - https://padlet.com/annaxambo/qsxjihgilp6cjf3j/wish/655369581] really nails the point and I suggest it should be shared at large among the community. This approach could be even used every other year, to avoid a saturation of the physical exchange that may happen after a while in close-by areas [e.g., being able to put your hands on demos that come only from people that live at a distance small enough for you to physically meet them at local hubs]

Re: "Grounding the ICMC", I also think this is an important document and wonder if we could post a link to the NIME mailing list?

Yes, good idea. Would you like to ask Richard for permission to do so?

Btw: I came across this very interesting analysis of how to decrease carbon emission through some strategic choices in conference planning: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02057-2

A NIME journal should have conversations/interviews in the mode of the Sonami/Feibrink paper. As well as reviews/reflections of commercial DMI's.

sorry to spam with some off-NIME links, I was just talking in the general zoom about how to make posters more discoverable. We made a website for our local "Australasian Computer Music Conference" with little cards for each paper and performance (https://acmc2020.com/papers.html?filter=keywords) - based on a recent conference website framework called mini-conf. As with everything these days it was a very last minute hack, but we could have something like it to help discover papers/peformances/posters in future NIMEs or even the main website.

Omg yes! Love this idea!

Or filling the https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScSeh092192meXaHhRf25h7kOm7IAkB3ft5_Cy-cC6l6p3yDw/viewform! In reality we won?t have Q&A in the final session, just closing remarks, prizes, and the NIME 2021 presentation

Great!

@a.r.jensenius Since it was @anna.xambo who posted the draft of the letter to the Publication Ecosystem workshop and brought it to our attention, I wonder if she wants to be the one to share it with the entire NIME community via the mailing list? I'd be happy to approve the post as moderator.

Either way we should check with the author to make sure whether it is ok and not stealing CMJ's thunder.

@a.r.jensenius at NIME01, when we were already discussing a possible conference, I distinctly remember Perry Cook suggested it could be a group that does not meet every year, but every few years. There's Documenta in Kassel, which happens once every five years. The Munster sculpture exhibition, which is once a decade and in India there's the Kumbha Mela, a gathering that takes place once every 12 years and has continued for more than a millennium, demonstrating that long cycle events can be stable. :wink:

The nature article summarized: ? choose accesible venues ? increase virtual attendance ? become biennial and N-hub meetings (they discuss three, but we'll need more to provide access to the southern hemisphere)

Yes! And some (almost certainly) collective effort to argue for the value and very-much-on-topicness of the sustained work involved in nuturing and maintaining toolsets and frameworks that enable long term artistic practice (e.g. Wekinator, RapidMix, FTM&Co,Mubu, the SC plugins etc etc).

There's a vicious circle of academic incentive structures and perceived worthiness that makes this sort of work harder than it ought to be, despite its obvious (IMO) value

Given that the original email thread was published at the ICMA mailing list by Douglas Keislar (editor CMJ), we could ask if he would like to also share the message with the NIME community mailing list? Happy to get in touch, but maybe @michael.lyons or @a.r.jensenius would like to approach him directly?

Great if you could do it @anna.xambo!

We should definitely collect all the feedbacks on how to improve demo and poster sessions with care. As co-chair, I feel that both our authors and the attendees could have had a better experience in that regard. Thanks!

additionally, I think we should incorporate humanities type paper submissions. There is a growing interest in philosophy of our community, this year some harsh but needed criticism on our ecosystem. We should be able to follow up, challenge, criticise and contribute to shared ideas in a ways that allows for growth. Response type papers would be beneficial in my opinion and add to the peer review process.

Let's think through some ways to scaffold this too. In particular, thinking about how this can also be done safely by people in lesser positions of power (e.g. non-tenured, adjunct faculty, graduate students, etc.)

(Or can it be done, in academia, in general... )

I was thinking that it would be interesting to have so affirmative actions at this conference for it to be more inclusive. We could have a systems of quotas of papers, music, installation and poster selections that guaranteed a minimum gender, ethnical/racial and global diversity and inclusion of researchers and artists with disabilities. I believe the discussion this conferenced brought forward here at slack and the amazing papers presented are a good starting point, but we need actions, don't you think?

I am really happy with this movement to create a group to discuss inclusion at this conference. It would be a fruitful space to be creative to think of what actions we could have to create the community we want.

Looks like a great layout!

For accessibility: the Livecoding Conference in 2017 in Mexico, was helt bilingual, with live translation and possibility to submit both in English and Spanish, to ensure that the local community could participate. https://iclc.toplap.org/2017/en/index.html

And I don't quite remember whether the one in Madrid in 2019 also had both options.

but I think so...

Multi-language conferences are great for diversity and access - I would strongly be in favour of a multi-language NIME. It would be easy to do, especially if held online or partially online.

I will bring the discussion of this topic here... How do you think we could stimulate papers around these topics of very important music technology movements that aren?t part of this white us/eu male bias? Keynotes in future conferences? Performances from these music contexts at nime?

Flucoma should be on that list, too, of course