The Neuromatch Revolution is here! And it's been here for months!! (which seems like years – or days – in COVID-time). For those of you behind the times or way too socially isolated (like me), the online Neuromatch conference is already on its third iteration since March. And it's larger, more inclusive, more diverse than ever.
I've been incredibly impressed with neuromatch 3.0 and its mission statement:
“A conference made for the whole neuroscience community
Based on the successful mind-matching session at the Cognitive Computational Neuroscience (CCN) conference and previous Neuromatch conference with more than 6k attendees, we decided to create an online unconference for all neuroscientists. We are building a better online experience for neuroscience conferences by making them more open, inclusive, and democratic.”
In fact, I don't know how other online neuroscience conferences can compete!
- $25 registration, waived for those who cannot afford it.
- 100% of submissions accepted as talks.
- nearly 24-hour-a-day programming in up to 10 simultaneous zoom rooms, simulcast on YouTube.
- nice scheduling feature of three thematic 15 minute talks per hour.
- sessions chaired by graduate students and post-docs.
- keynote speakers, mini-symposia, workshops.
- presentations from funding agencies.
- AND special events on the main stage covering topics not addressed at other conferences.
AND...
- algorithmically optimized programming
...which is fitting, since the neuromatch movement was instigated by computational neuroscientists Konrad Kording and Dan Goodman.
I've been moved (and encouraged) by the diversity of presenters and topics. In particular, I have greatly appreciated the prominence of these special events:
Neuromatch 3.0 continues live through Friday Oct. 30. The talks are recorded and will be available on the YouTube channel for later viewing.
Neurocompliments to all the organizers, speakers, and participants!
Further Reading...
Kording on Neuromatch at Medium (April 2020)
How to run big (neuro)science conferences online — neuromatch.io (moving fast, breaking things, enabling community)
Additional Coverage
Designing a Virtual Neuroscience Conference (April 3, 2020)
A match for virtual conferences (May 18, 2020)
The Self-Organized Movement to Create an Inclusive Computational Neuroscience School (Sept. 17, 2020)
