How to use Slackto attend poster sessions
Slack is the platform we will be using for virtual posters. During the entire conference (22nd-27th
August), you will be able to see all posters there, and ask authors questions about them. In
addition, there is a chance to talk to authors live during their two-hour scheduled presentation
timeslot. In brief, the process for viewing a poster will be:
1. Follow the link in the programme to view the poster channel on Slack. Scroll to thevery top of the channel to find links to the poster PDF and anything else the presenterhas shared.
2. If you’d like to talk to the author live during their presentation timeslot, follow themeeting link in their Slack channel to join a live video call with them. Like at aface-to-face conference, visitors can wander in and out of this video meeting during thetimeslot, where the author will guide them through the poster and answer questions.
3. Outside of the two-hour scheduled presentation timeslot, you can continue to see theposter and discuss it with the author via text discussion in the poster’s Slackchannel. Since these text discussions are asynchronous, we hope they facilitate
conversations across the many different timezones presenters and attendees are in.
Slack is a messaging platform designed for groups of people to communicate (e.g. within acompany, a lab, or a conference). There is an ECVP 2021 Slack workspace and within it every
poster presenter has their own channel. Think of these channels as virtual poster boards. It iswhere presenters share their posters, and where attendees come to talk to them about it.

Joining SlackWe have sent an invitation link via Eventbrite to the email that you used to register for the
conference. You should have received an email like the one below. When you click “join now” inthis email it will prompt you to create a Slack account in the ECVP workspace, then send you alogin code.

A few tips:● Please use your full name as your display name in Slack, so that people can identify
you. Think of this like your conference badge.
● If this is your first time using Slack, you can either install it on your computer, or use it ina browser.
● If you have already used Slack for work or other conferences, you will still be prompted
to create a new account, because accounts are specific to each workspace.
● You can join slack under any email address you would like - just enter your preferredaddress when you click the invitation link.
● If you believe you have joined the workspace, but are having trouble re-entering it, go tohttps://slack.com/get-started#/find and enter the email address you joined with.

Finding posters on SlackFinding posters by presentation timeslot
When you click on a poster session in the online programme (https://ecvp2021.org/programme/)you will find a link in the right hand column to that poster’s channel in Slack. As long as you
are logged into the ECVP 2021 Slack workspace, you will be able to click these links to go
directly to each virtual poster board.

Poster sessions are arranged by the time at which presenters chose to conduct their live
presentation session, not by topic.

Finding posters by searching
If you would like to find a poster by a specific author, or on specific topic keywords, go to the“Search” tab of the online programme and use your inbuilt browser search (usually CTRL+F) tosearch. This will reveal the abstract, along with information about the timeslot, and the “postercode”. You can then find the Slack channel either by following the link at the correspondingtimeslot, or by searching for the poster code within Slack.

Viewing and discussing posters on Slack, andjoining live presentation sessions
Once you arrive at a poster’s channel within Slack, it should look something like the image
below.
Each poster channel will show all the messages that have been posted in it, from the author andattendees, in chronological order. The very first messages in the channel will be links posted by
the author, to the poster PDF, a video meeting link for their live presentation, and any othermaterials they have chosen to share (e.g. a video walkthrough of the poster, data, or stimuli). In
busy channels you might need to scroll quite far to get to the very first messages in the channel.
Looking at the top bar, just under the channel name, you might also find that presenters have“pinned” or “bookmarked” their poster PDFs to make them easier to locate.

Under “Channels” in the left-hand panel you will see that you have been automaticallysubscribed to two channels: announcements (for conference-wide organiser announcements)and ecvp-chat (for questions and comments among attendees). The channels for the 492
posters don’t initially show up here - but if you follow a link to one of them from the programme,
you can click “join channel” to have it show up in the Channels panel for easy future access.
Once you have visited a poster channel and looked at the poster PDF and any other materials,
feel free to type questions or comments or thoughts directly into the text box at the bottom of thechannel. The author can reply to these messages, creating discussion threads. We hope thatover the course of the week, it will be possible for in-depth discussions to take place between
presenters and visitors.
You can also send and receive direct messages to anyone registered at ECVP, and even makeone-on-one video calls. These might be useful for discussing posters with authors outside of thescheduled presentation timeslots. Either click on the person’s username, or search for themusing the search bar at the top of Slack. This takes you to a one-on-one channel where you cansend messages or start a call (via the phone icon at the top right).

Discussing talk sessions on SlackWe have also set up Slack channels for each of the talk sessions, including Keynotes andspecial sessions. You can find links to these channels by clicking on a session and following thelink “Discuss this session via Slack”. We are encouraging all speakers to go to thesechannels at the end of their session, to answer any questions that they didn’t have time forduring the session. You might also want to use them during sessions to discuss or clarify points
with other audience members, or share links to relevant work.

Code of conduct
Messages on all channels are visible to everyone at ECVP. Please be professional, friendly, andrespectful in all interactions. This will be many people’s first experience of ECVP, and our
registration cohort is larger and more diverse than in any previous year. We hope that thediscussions on Slack will create a welcoming environment and a sense of community despite us
not being able to meet face-to-face this year. Anyone making inappropriate comments either on
public channels, or via direct messages, will be removed from the platform. If you feel
uncomfortable with anyone’s comments or behaviour on Slack, please get in touch with us atslack@ecvp2021.org.

Support and questions
Before the conference, email any questions to: slack@ecvp2021.org
During ECVP, you can either email slack@ecvp2021.org, or ask within the “ecvp-chat” channel
on Slack.