Editorial

Abstract

Special times call for special measures. During the Corona pandemic, it was impossible to hold the 2020 IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society (NPSS) Real Time Conference (RT2020) in person at the International Center for Interdisciplinary Science and Education (ICISE) in Quy Nhon, Vietnam. After shifting the original date from spring to fall 2020, the executive committee decided to run RT2020 completely virtual for the first time. This was quite a challenge, but the combination of free or readily available software tools, such as Indico, Zoom, Slido, Slack, and Padlet, made it possible to give all participants a good and sometimes even better experience compared to in-person meetings. One example was to give all poster presenters an individual Zoom room, where they not only could display a poster but also show slides or even live video from their lab. Our traditional micro-orals were pre-recorded 2-min videos stitched together, giving many people the possibility to talk about their work to the whole audience. Although most of us look forward to seeing each other one day, the virtual experience was much better than originally anticipated, especially giving many people from developing countries the possibility to participate who otherwise could not have joined. I would like to express my great gratitude to our Co-Chair Martin Grossmann from PSI, with whom I ran all logistics and the virtual environment for the whole conference.