Throughout the two weeks of FSCI, you will learn much within our courses, and in the plenary events. But there’s so much more going on in the “virtual hallways” of the institute, which many attendees count as the most valuable aspect of the experience.
Community members are leading the arrangement of structured events, activities and programs – a variety of ways that all FSCI attendees can contribute their voices and their ideas to the conversations around scholarly communication. We hope that you select a venue to contribute that is either within your comfort zone, or challenges you to stretch beyond that comfort zone.
Lightning Talks
Do you have a story to tell, or a successful technique to suggest to your colleagues? Are you passionate about a facet of scholarly communication that you don’t see in our curriculum? Do you have something to add to the dialogue that you feel is being overlooked? Then contribute a Lightning Talk, and spark some conversation. Held on Day 1 of FSCI, these talks help set the tone and foster connections among like-minded professionals in attendance.
The main rules are that your talk should: 1) make the audience think; 2) discuss something that could make an impact in scholarly communications, 3) be a maximum of five minutes; and 4) follow the FORCE11 Code of Conduct.
If you want to present a lightning talk, please submit a description of it at the link below. The submitted talks will be reviewed by a small committee for relevance, potential impact, and excitement, with preference given to those proposals that complement other parts of the FSCI program. Decisions will be announced ahead of FSCI, along with brief feedback.
Accepted lightning talks can be presented either without slides or with PDF slides. Slides will be required to be submitted by 9 AM on the day of the lightning talks, July 16, to give us time to assemble them into a single presentation to avoid delays in switching screen sharing. Each speaker will get up to 5 minutes to talk. Some related guidance on roughly similar talks is available from scidev.net.
Lightning Talk Submissions are due July 16th
Click on the link to submit a lightning talk proposal: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=fsci2021lt
Like-Minded Meetups
Like-Minded Meetups (formerly known as Birds-of-a-Feather) provide space to join your colleagues to network and exchange ideas, insights, and experiences. Meet up with individuals who share professional and/or personal interests, or join small group discussions in Topia. To participate, fill out the participant’s survey, and based on your responses you will be connected with your individual matches via email. Discussion groups will be announced on Slack and will meet up via Topia over the course of FSCI2021.
Look for the participant’s survey just prior to the start of FSCI2021.
Fireside Cats!
Sometimes you need a break from all this relentless professionalism, and you want some company as you unwind. During in-person FSCI, when disengaging from your coursework and grabbing a coffee or tea, you can naturally strike up a conversation with someone from across the world who just happened to approach the beverage table at the same moment. Every Fireside Cats! session is searching for that serendipity in a communal Do-nothing-a-thon of soothing vibes. So come, sit back in a relaxed environment, and chat with FSCI’s coolest (and warmest) cats.
Join us, and bring your own cup of coffee, tea, or a nicely chilled prosecco. We have a variety of schedules to suit different time zones (and beverage preferences). We also have a variety of topics to start us off – but no syllabus, no action items, no agenda. Just conversation!
Random Network
This networking program will give you the chance to meet new friends powered by the serendipitous magic of probability! All FSCI participants will be randomly separated into small groups at the beginning of FSCI. This is our effort to replicate casual, coincidental meet-ups in the hallways or in the cafeteria at in-person FSCI events. Once connected, you are encouraged to network within the small group via the platform of your choice (e.g., Topia, Slack, email, Zoom, etc).
FSCI2021 Challenge: Collaborating to Counter Misinformation
The past year of the COVID-19 pandemic shed another spotlight on the urgent crisis of disinformation to the society. As the community of scholarly communication, many of us have asked how we can help counter disinformation that is harmful to society. During the FSCI2021, we want to challenge the community to crowdsource ideas and resources to counter disinformation. We will use a Google doc to collect information and ideas throughout the summer and everyone is invited to join the challenge. No contribution is too small! We will curate and publish the final outcome of this challenge in a public repository and share it with the public. The challenge will be launched at the opening plenary of the 2021 FSCI and continue throughout the institute. All FSCI participants (instructors, students, organizers, and general attendees) are invited to contribute, and will be acknowledged in the final document. The Google doc will remain open for comment until August 31, 2021. A group of volunteers will curate the ideas and resources from all contributions and disseminate the final product.
BattleDecks!!
You will not want to miss this night. Everyone is invited to take part in BattleDecks (a.k.a. PowerPoint karaoke)—Virtual Edition! How are your improv skills? Ready to perform in front of a live audience? Each contestant will be given 3-5 minutes to present, speaking over ten slides you have never seen, with the goal of telling a coherent story while (a) entertaining the audience and (b) keeping a straight face. An in-person FSCI favorite, we’re dying to see how this plays out via Zoom.
Details on how you can get involved in all these events will be sent to FSCI registrants over the summer months.
