By Pedro Ferreira, Ph.D., Secretary of REA
Last year’s symposium was a challenge in many ways. In our best tradition, we worked to explore new possibilities in the face of radical uncertainty and entirely novel conditions. The outcome was considered by many attendees a success, but important problems and shortfalls should be reflected upon. One of such shortfalls was the failure to deliver the recordings from sessions. Foremost, we would like to sincerely apologize to our community for not delivering on this, and provide a more clear explanation.
As we approached the dates of our event and during the event itself, it became clear to us that their VCS (Virtual Conference System) was at least in part, yet lacking the robustness to undertake the impact with a full scale, worldwide, and diverse event such as the one we were bringing together. However, EasyChair demonstrated outstanding support throughout the whole process and, despite many problems experienced in the day before and throughout the first day of the event in particular (i.e. people not being able to access their accounts, sessions…), the continuous presence of EasyChair support was greatly appreciated and valued by us and all attendees in general.
Overall, our impressions were positive. Problems will always emerge no matter what, and there’s nothing better than having a capable technical team to rely upon.
The one single problem which has radically changed these rather positive impressions emerged long after the conclusion of the event:
EasyChair staff assured us on various occasions, that VCS sessions would be recorded and that these recordings would be made available to attendees. This was after all, vital for an event that engaged participants across all time zones. Many of our participants were in fact relying on these recordings to follow parts of the program that were taking place within time zones too far apart from their own.
We enquired with EasyChair staff on how and when recordings would become available, not only during the days of the symposium but on numerous occasions between then and now. We were systematically reassured that they would be ready soon, or even “within the week” of that given contact. To our great disappointment, months went by and nothing ever came through. The utmost unacceptable was the fact that eventually, EasyChair staff no longer bothered to reply to our emails. For months now, we have experienced a total silence that has no reasonable explanation and does not live up to any of the standards EasyChair advertises on its website.
We have tried on many occasions to obtain from EasyChair a justification as to why recordings were never delivered, but mostly why such unacceptable customer care. We have come to accept their silence as an indicator that any further attempt to resolve this in a positive way is a waste of time and that it is time to move forward with the firm belief that we’ve exhausted all means within our reach.
Work on the 10th Symposium on Resilience Engineering has begun and information will be coming very soon!