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Hi HN, I'm the developer (@srush_nlp). This was made for ICLR a deep learning conference we ran last month. We couldn't find any tools to do the things we wante

by srush 6y ago

Hi HN, I'm the developer (@srush_nlp). This was made for ICLR a deep learning conference we ran last month. We couldn't find any tools to do the things we wanted so we went a bit rogue and built it ourselves. There's a bunch of ML bits in it as well. Here's the back story https://twitter.com/srush_nlp/status/1253786329575538691?s=19 https://twitter.com/srush_nlp/status/1253786329575538691?s=1... . I'm a professor, not a software engineer, so happy for any comments or contributors!

smcnally 6y ago
Thank you for cleaning up the improvisational work you did for your team’s own needs and making this available to everyone. The mini-conf tour is a good overview for generalized application. Your ICLR pages are great examples of mini-conf in action, e.g. https://iclr.cc/virtual_2020/workshops_8.html https://iclr.cc/virtual_2020/workshops_8.html https://iclr.cc/virtual_2020/papers.html?filter=keywords https://iclr.cc/virtual_2020/papers.html?filter=keywords
- srush 6y ago
  Yeah :) we hacked in a lot of things last minute for ICLR. MiniConf is a clean 80% functionality / 20% code version of that codebase.
walterbell 6y ago
This is both usable and has a unique "vibe", in a time when many virtual events have struggled to capture the character and human essence of their F2F events. Congratulations and thank you for releasing the code! A few production questions. 1. Sync/playback is relatively fast. Are you using a streaming server or web-hosted video files? 2. On pages with video & slides, how are the two frames synchronized, e.g. are those two synchronized video streams with known timecodes for slide changes, or is the slide frame showing static images that are synced with video timecodes? 3. Did you chose Python because of existing code that you wanted to reuse? 4. Which existing software was closest to meeting your needs, and what were the shortcomings that motivated miniconf?
- srush 6y ago
  Thanks! If you are interested more about the event here was a podcast https://www.thetalkingmachines.com/episodes/iclr-accessible-inclusive-virtual https://www.thetalkingmachines.com/episodes/iclr-accessible-... and blog post https://medium.com/@iclr_conf/gone-virtual-lessons-from-iclr2020-1743ce6164a3 https://medium.com/@iclr_conf/gone-virtual-lessons-from-iclr... Answers: 1 + 2. We used https://slideslive.com/ https://slideslive.com/ an external conference provider. They do a lot of optimizing behind the scenes, and have that cool sync. 3. Python is the de facto standard language in ML. We use it for everything. We thought about js/react or something, but we didn't think it would be maintainable. 4. A lot of the existing software assumed there would be a physical event or even worse tried to pretend there was a virtual physical event. We wanted something that was async-first, desktop-oriented, and very simple to browse.
  - zoomablemind 6y ago
    So MiniConf is effectively a framework for maintaining a conference/event website. It takes care of presenting the program, schedule and ties together the presentations content (video, slides) which are hosted and served by third-party providers. The result is a static website where the participants meet at time, but all interactions are handled by the third-party providers. The main features are ease of configuration (CSV files) and templatability (with Flask). Is my understanding correct? I was wondering if it offered similar features to EasyChair, like participant registration, review process, notifications etc.
    - srush 6y ago
      Yup that's right. Although I would add front-end search and visualization (with d3) to the features. As you mentioned there are a lot of good solutions for review, notification, and reg. Common choices are OpenReview/CMT/HotCRP/EasyChair/softconf... They're all pretty mature and complex. The thing that people suddenly need is ways to easily customize their own pages for hosting virtual conferences and workshops. That's the problem miniconf targets.
      - 6y ago

by srush 6y ago

smcnally 6y ago

Thank you for cleaning up the improvisational work you did for your team’s own needs and making this available to everyone. The mini-conf tour is a good overview for generalized application. Your ICLR pages are great examples of mini-conf in action, e.g. https://iclr.cc/virtual_2020/workshops_8.html https://iclr.cc/virtual_2020/workshops_8.html https://iclr.cc/virtual_2020/papers.html?filter=keywords https://iclr.cc/virtual_2020/papers.html?filter=keywords

srush 6y ago
Yeah :) we hacked in a lot of things last minute for ICLR. MiniConf is a clean 80% functionality / 20% code version of that codebase.

walterbell 6y ago

This is both usable and has a unique "vibe", in a time when many virtual events have struggled to capture the character and human essence of their F2F events. Congratulations and thank you for releasing the code! A few production questions. 1. Sync/playback is relatively fast. Are you using a streaming server or web-hosted video files? 2. On pages with video & slides, how are the two frames synchronized, e.g. are those two synchronized video streams with known timecodes for slide changes, or is the slide frame showing static images that are synced with video timecodes? 3. Did you chose Python because of existing code that you wanted to reuse? 4. Which existing software was closest to meeting your needs, and what were the shortcomings that motivated miniconf?

srush 6y ago
Thanks! If you are interested more about the event here was a podcast https://www.thetalkingmachines.com/episodes/iclr-accessible-inclusive-virtual https://www.thetalkingmachines.com/episodes/iclr-accessible-... and blog post https://medium.com/@iclr_conf/gone-virtual-lessons-from-iclr2020-1743ce6164a3 https://medium.com/@iclr_conf/gone-virtual-lessons-from-iclr... Answers: 1 + 2. We used https://slideslive.com/ https://slideslive.com/ an external conference provider. They do a lot of optimizing behind the scenes, and have that cool sync. 3. Python is the de facto standard language in ML. We use it for everything. We thought about js/react or something, but we didn't think it would be maintainable. 4. A lot of the existing software assumed there would be a physical event or even worse tried to pretend there was a virtual physical event. We wanted something that was async-first, desktop-oriented, and very simple to browse.
- zoomablemind 6y ago
  So MiniConf is effectively a framework for maintaining a conference/event website. It takes care of presenting the program, schedule and ties together the presentations content (video, slides) which are hosted and served by third-party providers. The result is a static website where the participants meet at time, but all interactions are handled by the third-party providers. The main features are ease of configuration (CSV files) and templatability (with Flask). Is my understanding correct? I was wondering if it offered similar features to EasyChair, like participant registration, review process, notifications etc.
  - srush 6y ago
    Yup that's right. Although I would add front-end search and visualization (with d3) to the features. As you mentioned there are a lot of good solutions for review, notification, and reg. Common choices are OpenReview/CMT/HotCRP/EasyChair/softconf... They're all pretty mature and complex. The thing that people suddenly need is ways to easily customize their own pages for hosting virtual conferences and workshops. That's the problem miniconf targets.
    - 6y ago