The social activities is a subtle but an important part of a regular live conference. Therefore, we also would like to virtualize the social aspect of a conference as best as we can. Of course, we cannot physically get together due to the fact that the participants will be located all around the world. However, this does not necessarily mean that we cannnot enjoy an activity together. Thus, we would like to offer two social activities in the upcoming ICMS.
It's not simple to move the conference dinner online. It seems impossible to create an experience similar to a conference dinner in any digital way. However, we can also take advantage of the fact that you may be home during the conference: We can add a cooking component to the conference dinner! Here are two suggestion for you for the virtual dinner:
We will upload several menu choices to the Slack channel #virtual-dinner before the conference starts, so that you have enough time to do the shopping (and ask questions about possible replacements). The cooking session will start somewhere between 17:00 and 18:00 CEST on Wednesday, July 15 and everybody who starts cooking and want to be part of the joint cooking session can announce a virtual conference room in the Slack channel.
For joint dining it seems appropriate that people meet in smaller conference rooms (aka "tables") by invitation. Again, please use the Slack to invite people or announce that there are free seats at your "table".
In order to make our conference dinner & cooking more fun, we will have an unofficial cooking contest. Also, we believe that a little bit of competition will help us to bring forth our inner Julia Child. You can simply join to the competition by cooking one of the dishes from our dish list, and share the finished product's photo in our Slack channel for virtual dinner. There will be a poll in the Slack channel after the event. The photo with the most votes in the poll will win the competition. Joining to the competition is of course entirely voluntary, however we encourage all of our participants to contribute and share their culinary skills with us. The winner of the competition will get the honorary title of "Chef de Conférence", and will earn an adopted polyhedron from Polytopia named "Chef [name of the winner] Polyhedron". Most importantly, the winner will get to eat the "best" dish of the conference!
Another part of the social events will be consisting of virtual museum tours. On Wednesday, July 15th at 11:30 CEST, we will have a guided tour of the Museum für Islamische Kunst (part of the Pergamonmuseum) in Berlin. The tour will be led by Sophia Vassilopoulou and takes about 90 minutes. You can participate via BigBlueButton, the link can be found in the booklet that will be provided to participants.
If you prefer to explore another museum on your own, we have put together links to certain museums in Germany that offer virtual galleries:
The official time reserved for this event is on July 15, Wednesday between 11:30 and 13:30 CEST, but of course you can enjoy these virtual galleries whenever you can. There will be a channel in our Slack for those who want to discuss exhibitions and share emotions.