EBRAINS Unconference – a participant-driven workshop where you choose the topics!
The EBRAINS Unconference is a bottom-up and participant-driven workshop where the participants influence the topics within an overarching theme. Together with the other participants and the topic-chairs, you will discuss the most popular and highest ranked topics within the overarching theme, How to translate science into practice within neuroscience.
Your contributions from your spheres of neuroscience are important in the understanding and discussions within the overarching theme, How to translate science into practice. At the Unconference you will along with other specialized and interdisciplinary participants discuss the topics chosen by you. In other words, your choices define the conference agenda. This is a special opportunity for you to expand your knowledge and engage in discussions on topics of your interest, while you meet new potential collaborators and expand your professional network.
The overarching theme, How to translate science into practice within neuroscience, opens for discussions about what potential you can gain and how you can overcome potential barriers when working at the crossroads between science and practice.
What is an EBRAINS Unconference?
An EBRAINS Unconference is a conference without predefined topics, but with an overarching theme. The actual topics are generated and prioritized by the participants, based on interest and relevance. This allows the participants to discuss and network within topics ranked and chosen by themselves.
This unconference is organized online, and each parallel session will be co-facilitated by topic-chairs. All participants of the unconference can submit a topic and the authors of the five most popular topics will be responsible for co-chairing a parallel session, in a break-out room, on the chosen topic.
As an Unconference participant, you can at the event choose which topic session to join, and are allowed to visit another session as it suits your interest – this is based on the ‘Law of 2 Feet’:
“If you aren’t learning or contributing or having fun where you stand now, use your two feet and go somewhere where you can learn or contribute or have fun”
The EBRAINS Unconference will be kicked off with a talk by Diana Deca, PhD, and CEO at Neurobotx. Diana Deca has a background as a researcher and is passionate about neuroscience, robotics, VR and AI. Diana Deca will tell us about her experiences with translating science into practice. Read more about Diana Decas company, Neurobotx, here.
Who will participate?
We welcome you as a researcher, a practitioner, or the one building bridges in between, to cover this exciting theme of translating science into practice.
We are thrilled to announce the topics that will define the agenda and discussions!
We originally initiated a voting session where the five most popular topics will be the ones defining the discussions at the Unconference, but since we got a few very interesting and inspiring topics, those will be the ones defining the discussions of the day.
The topics will be pitched by the topic-chairs at the Unconference, but until then, you can read more about the topics on the event page at the EBRAINS Community space here.
If you do not have a profile at the EBRAINS Community space yet, you can simply sign on with your EBRAINS account or create a user with an email and password of your choice here.
During the discussions we will be using the tool Mural, we have created a sandbox for you to get familiar with the functionalities. Please try the sandbox before the Unconference here.
The process of a EBRAINS Unconference:
Remember you influence the topics!
The actual topics are generated by the participants before the day of the unconference, and the five top-voted topics will be the ones defining the topics of the Unconference.
Remember to submit your topic or vote on topics of your interest! Read more about how to submit your topic in the section below.
Submit your topic here
If you like to submit a topic, the topic should reflect your interest and passion for what you find important when collaborating across neuroscience. By submitting a topic, we expect you to participate in the Unconference, and you commit yourself to the following (if your topic is chosen):
- Giving a short pitch about the topic at the Unconference (30-45 sec.)
- Host and facilitate break-out room discussions within your topic at the Unconference
- Presenting points of discussion in the plenum
- Write and deliver a short review of the points that you and the participants in the break-out room agreed on proceeding with (the deadline for the review is Monday, July 4th, 2022)
The bullets above will be required for all chosen topic-chairs.
The deadline for your submitted topic is Monday, June 6th, at 12:00 AM (CEST)
The voting session:
All the submitted topics will be presented in a Mural. The link for the Mural page will be sent to you before the start of the voting session. The 5 most popular topics will be the topics defining the discussions of the unconference.
Start of voting session: Monday, June 6th, 2022.
End of voting session: Thursday, June 9th, 2022.
The topic-chairs will be contacted afterward and invited to a short brief in the week before the Unconference. More information about this will be available soon.
Program of the Unconference
The Unconference is divided into three main sessions and a summarizing plenary.
First session: Welcome and presentation of the Unconference in plenum. There will be a talk by speaker Diana Deca, that will set the frame of the Unconference. Afterward, the owners of the 5 top-voted topics will present their topics.
Second session: Participants will choose one of the five topics and join the associated break-out room that matches their field of interest. After discussions in break-out rooms, there will be a short status in the plenum, before entering the final session.
Third session: After a status in the plenum participants will again choose a break-outroom. Participants are free to choose another break-out room than the one they chose in the previous session. In the break-out room, the discussions can be continued from the previous session, but there should be a focus on future proceedings.
Before we end the day: Representatives from the break-out room will present their proceedings in the plenum.
Stay updated and start networking!
Stay updated about the EBRAINS Unconference on this site, and join the EBRAINS Community space to access the event on our community platform. At the EBRAINS Community space you can already start networking with participants and all the other members of the EBRAINS Community!
Register at the EBRAINS Community space here.
You access the EBRAINS Unconference event here.
You can read more about the EBRAINS Community here, and access our tutorial page with some tips and tricks on how to get started here.
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