Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Due to the worldwide spread of the coronavirus we have decided not to hold an onsite CT Meeting but rather to have a virtual CT Meeting from August 3 to August 7, 2020. The meeting's time zone is Central European Summer Time (CEST).

Presentations can be viewed live online and, in addition, as a video recording as well. The latter may be important if the scheduled time of the presentation is inconvenient for you, in particular if you are in a different time zone. Only registered participants are admitted to the online meeting and to the download sections of the meeting website.

Oral presenters are being asked to submit their contribution as a PowerPoint recording. We will use this recorded version of the talk if the speaker a) does not show up for the virtual meeting or b) if his/her internet connection turns out to be insufficient or c) if he/she asks us to do so. The regular way to present is that the presenters share their PowerPoint presentation running on their own computer, and present through their microphone and video camera. As usual, each talk will be followed by a questions and answers period, which will be moderated by the session chairs. Time slots are 20 minutes, which is about 15 minutes for the presentation and about 5 minutes for questions and answers.

Poster presenters are being asked to submit a single teaser slide in PowerPoint format, as usual. In contrast to the typical onsite CT Meeting this slide needs to have a voice recording. Playing back the slide and its recording must be limited to a 30 s time slot. The aim of this teaser slide is to make the audience curious about the poster. So do not give away too many details! At the beginning of each poster session we will playback all teaser slides of the posters to be presented, i.e. about 35 per poster session. We will then split the session into about five parallel subsessions. The poster presenters will be assigned to one of the sessions. The audience can enter and leave any subsession, as they like. Each subsession will be moderated by a session chair. The poster presenters are supposed to have a PowerPoint presentation available explaining their work whenever a questioner asks to do so.

Monday, August 3, will be reserved for test runs. We will have a couple of parallel sessions, chaired by us organizers, where the participants (audience, oral presenters, poster presenters, session chairs) may freely enter and leave and they may ask questions regarding the conferencing tools. Presenters may use those sessions to practice the tools regarding the presentations and will have the chance to present one or two short slides. Chairs may use those sessions to practice chairing a session, i.e. muting and unmuting participants and presenters. To do so we can temporarily make them a co-chair of the test session. The audience can use the test session to see how to raise (and lower) their hand and how to ask questions.

To make the meeting as friendly and informal as possible for a virtual meeting it would be nice if you did consider activating your video camera. Then the other participants can see you. Please avoid bright illumination from behind you.

We look forward you joining us for this great new experience!

Instructions and tips for PowerPoint recording is available at:
www.support.office.com
General information on COVID-19 can be found at the official WHO site:
www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019
Information on the current risk in Germany is provided by the Robert-Koch-Institut:
www.rki.de/EN/Home/homepage_node.html