Hi Jim.
Hey Tony.
What's up? We are in Cambridge, but where is everyone?
No one out - actually there's some people behind me, out and about.
They don't look like HRI academics.
We made this conference and no one is showing up.
We're going to be stuck with 650 bottles of beer.
Just the two of us. Could be worse.
Ah well, you've guessed it. COVID-19 hit HRI bad.
After a lot of deliberation, trying to save the conference, scaling it down to a...
...mixed daily meeting, a mix of online and offline, nothing worked.
So we had to cancel the conference and move entirely to an online model of the conference.
Which wasn't an easy decision to make.
We went through all stages of grief, denial, anger, frustration, and...
Salsa dancing.
Yeah, salsa dancing.
But luckily during the transition to a virtual conference...
we could count on a huge team of amazing people
Our organising committee was fantastic.
Not only in making sure everything was up and running to have a real conference,
but stepping up to the plate and helping us manage the fall-out.
Often on a short notice, a new task... No one signed up for this... so we had a great team to support us.
So a huge shout out to all the organising committee...
everyone who stepped up and did a lot of extra work to get through this.
That's right. And the people at ACM as well, they were amazing just managing the fall-out. All the admin.
Helping with the budget, helping with the admin, helping manage the contracts.
The ACM was fantastic.
So what is this virtual conference going to look like?
So we're going to have pre-recorded talks, online soon.
And that's going to be everything.
That's going to be full papers, alt.HRI, Late Breaking Reports ...
We'll have YouTube channels showing pre-recorded videos.
And we encourage everyone to come and enjoy a virtual conference experience.
We're using a launch platform by the ACM called QOALA.
And hopefully that's going to be archival and permanent. So you don't have to rush to grab everything of the site.
The ACM, and we're on board, is planning to keep this up indefinitely.
So that you can go back and visit the HRI virtual conference at any time you like.
And to allow you to engage as well with the presenters and the authors...
we'll open up the comments section on the YouTube channel,
so you can have a discussion there.
Do check back. People will be coming in asking questions, replying, discussing papers.
And we'll leave this open for as long as we possibly can.
Through the virtual conference we do encourage and support grass roots initiatives.
Things have been happening already. Happy hours and other HRI events.
If you do host something, if you have a viewing party or an HRI party...
and it's virtual, please use our Twitter account @HRI_2020.
Just to let people know what is going on and invite others to join in.
Excellent. And finally, we would like to thank the sponsors who still stuck it out with us.
There's our silver sponsors: arm and Cambridge Consultants.
And bronze sponsors as well.
And our professional organisations: the ACM, the IEEE...
and specifically IEEE RAS, SIGCHI and ACM SIGAI.
They've been really helpful in supporting this transition to a virtual conference.
You know, this is unprecedented. Let's hope this is the first and last time we ever need to do this for HRI.
I'm sure we'll meet again. Don't quite know where or when.
But I'm glad the HRI community stays alive, very much alive, even though just virtual.
Thank you everybody, stay safe. And we'll meet again. Bye! Take care.