Frequently Asked Questions
Attending the conference
IEEE VIS is an annual premier forum for advances in theory, methods, and applications of visualization and visual analytics. For more information about the conference and to register for free, please visit the main website.
All times are converted to your auto-detected timezone (as reported by your browser). If you wish to view all times in a different time zone, please select a timezone in the dropdown on the Schedule page. Each page reports the currently-displayed timezone in the footer of every page in relation to GMT.
If you need to, you can request the website "forget" your saved timezone. Click this link.
To abide by IEEE regulations, we limit access to presentations and associated materials to conference attendees only. Hopefully you know that conference registration is FREE; please head over to our registration page and sign up using Tina.
After registring, our authentication system should send you an e-mail with an auto-generated password to access protected pages on this website.
Please head over to our main site's registration page and sign up using Tina. After registring, our authentication system should send you an e-mail with an auto-generated password to access protected pages on this website.
If you register using the Cvent system (e.g., paid registration), we get manual daily dumps of registration information daily. Please also sign up via Tina (for free) to get quicker access to authenticated content.
This e-mail will come from vistech@superministream.com (via amazonses.com). If you have not received an e-mail within an hour of registering with Tina, please join #support on Discord or e-mail web@ieeevis.org.
With any registration (free or otherwise), you are welcome to access all authenticated content in the conference. This includes direct links to pre-recorded content, paper PDFs, as well as access to live panels and Q&A sessions.
Paper artefacts linked from this website (e.g., direct links to PDFs) will be removed approximately two weeks following the conference, as negotiated with IEEE. At that time, links to paper PDFs will be removed, authentication restrictions will be lifted, and this site will remain evergreen from then on.
In the event that VIS 2021 is held virtually, the same subdomain will be used. The web-team will implement automatic updating of existing links at that time to point to a year-specific URI.
If you registered to receive the full conference materials, a secured URI of these materials will be e-mailed to the e-mail you registered with.
Our virtual conference website does not collect any personal information, nor does our web server track requests made from individual clients.
We use browser local storage for ensuring all dates and times are shown in your set timezone. We also use cookies to record your viewing history of papers on the papers page. These are entirely for your benefit and none of this data is trasmitted from your browser to us.
We use auth0 for authentication, Discord for live chat, and YouTube for viewing livestreams, who may handle your personal data (i.e., e-mail address) based upon their privacy policies. If you have a data request or any questions, please e-mail web@ieeevis.org.
Content issues
If you registered to get downloadable content, then you will receive a separate e-mail providing you a link to download that content. This e-mail will be separate from the e-mail with your virtual site authentication details. We don't offer this link on this website due to the different tiers of registration.
Honestly, ask YouTube. YouTube does not allow accounts (e.g. IEEE VIS) to embed live-streams until we reach 1,000 subscribers and 10,000 video hours watched. The message "Playback on other websites has been disabled by the video owner" is not a reflection of an option that we can control for live-streamed videos, unfortunately.
At the conclusion of each session's live-stream, we will attempt to update videos to be embeddable — though note that this is a manual process so this may not be done instantenously. Please use the link in the description just under the video to access the video natively on YouTube.
Please make your request in #support on Discord. We will make an effort based on our ability to respond to your request.
We may be unable to make changes to your title, author list, or abstract as these come from official IEEE sources. If there is an error, please immediately contact your paper chair to ensure the error does not propagate to IEEE's official version.
IEEE VIS 2020 Discord Guide
Discord is a chat platform similar to Slack. The server contains a set of channels, which can be grouped into categories. These are shown in the UI panel to the left, as in the picture below.
Figure 1: Discord's User Interface. Channels are shown to the left, those with a # icon (a) are text channels, those with a speaker icon (b) are voice chat channels. Users on the server are shown to the left. (c) Channels are grouped into categories by event. (d) The microphone icone is used to mute or unmute yourself, the headset icon is used to deafen (silence incoming voice chat) or undeafen yourself. (e) is the input for the chat.
Channels for Conference Sessions
A category is created for each conference event (e.g., associated events, workshops, full papers, short papers), and a channel within this category for each session of the event. These channels are created as the conference takes place. Thus on Sunday, the channel list will only show channels for events on Sunday. On Monday, the channel list will contain channels for all events taking place on Sunday and Monday, and so on through the week. Each event also has a "general" channel which can be used for general chat related to the event. When the session is live, the Discord Channel and YouTube chats will be synchronized using a bot. Messages from YouTube will be prefixed with (YouTube). Similarly, on YouTube messages from Discord are prefixed (Discord).
Navigation
Select the channel you want to join in the channels list. You can minimize categories you don't want to see by clicking the toggle arrow to the left of the category name (c). If you have unread messages in the category, those channels won't be hidden. To hide a category with unread messages you can right click it, as shown in Figure 2, and select mute for the period you want.
Figure 2:Muting a category to hide all unread messages in the category's channels.
Quick Navigation Tips
You can use Ctrl+k (Windows) and Cmd+K (Mac) to open the quick switcher. Then type the channel you want to jump to.
Discord Windows Shortcuts
- Finding a channel, user, voice channel: Ctrl+k
- Navigating between channels: alt+PGUP/PGDOWN
- Navigating between unread channels: alt+SHIFT+PGUP/PGDOWN
- Navigating between unread channels with mentions: ctrl+alt+shift+PGUP/PGDOWN
- Mark channel as read: Esc
- Show pins in channel: Ctrl+p
More shortcuts can be found here.
Discord Mac Shortcuts
- Finding a channel, user, voice channel: Cmd+k
- Navigating between channels: alt+PGUP/PGDOWN
- Navigating between unread channels: alt+SHIFT+PGUP/PGDOWN
- Navigating between unread channels with mentions: cmd+alt+shift+PGUP/PGDOWN
- Mark channel as read: Esc
- Show pins in channel: cmd+p
More shortcuts can be found here.
Text Chat
Text chat works just like slack, type a message in the input for the channel, and hit enter.
Figure 3: Sending text messages on Discord.
Voice Chat
Join a voice channel by clicking the voice channel name. You can be in a voice channel and text channel at the same time, as shown in Figure 4. The voice channel you are currently in will be shown by your username appearing within it (a), and the name will be shown above your audio controls (b). To disconnect from the voice channel, click the "Disconnect" icon shown next to your profile in the voice channel controls box (b). You can also click the channel name a second time to enter the channel for video. If video is enabled you could then turn on your camera.
Figure 4: Participating in a voice channel and text channel at the same time
Figure 5: After clicking the voice chat channel name a second time, you will enter it for video chat.
Using the Poll Bot
When a session is live, there will be a bot active in the channels for each live event. This bot can be used to create and vote on polls as a mode for Q&A. This can help if multiple people have the same question, instead of repeatedly asking it, you can ask it once on the poll and vote it up. The poll bot will print instructions in each channel associated with a live stream
Figure 6: Poll bot usage instructions. Shortly after the bot prints "The Session is Starting" to the chat, the polling system is active. The poll system ends when the bot prints "The Session has Ended" to the chat. You can type "\$help" when the bot is active to print the above help information
Conference Session Schedules
The schedule for each session will also be printed out to the session, with the session schedule and a link to the YouTube live stream.
Accessing Pinned Messages
Both the poll bot help and conference session are pinned to the channel's messages. You can access these at anytime by clicking the pin icon in the upper right, circled below.
