The 13th edition of the International Conference on Interactive Digital Narratives - ICIDS 2020 just ended. After months deliberating if having a mixed conference or a totally online conference, we finally agreed that the best solution was to have an virtual conference.

The virtual Live/synchronous conference was articulated through different platforms: a single room on ZOOM for all the academic events (papers, keynotes and debates) which gave us the feel of continuity, that feeling of being in a conference leaving the jacket on the auditorium to come back after the breaks; a Discord Server with multiple dedicated channels for discussion, questions, announcements, and videoconference tables to “meet the artists” or meeting the presenters of posters and demos; and finally a Gather Town space to socialize after the academic talks.

We also had 3 live artistic performances: An interactive theater piece The Evidence Chamber (twice) and the netprov Fantasy Spoils: After the Quest, and an one-hour radio show: ARDIN Radio, everynight with a recap of the conference day.

The asynchronous conference had space through 3 different websites:

The main website of the conference with the schedule and general info.
The website of the Art Exhibition “Texts of Discomfort”_ with 18 selected pieces. Each piece contained a link to download the artwork or a link to web-based artworks, and a video in which each artist presents their work. In this way interactors were able to enjoy the pieces in their own time and space, protecting that intimacy between the digital art piece and the visitors.
The website of ARDIN - Association of Research in Digital Interactive Narratives_ This website contains all the academic presentations with 20’ videos, and the recordings of all the live ZOOM sessions of the conference.

A very dynamic conference with several pros regarding the physical conference, and not a lot of cons, as we might have thought at the beginning. For sure, nothing replace the physical contact with researchers and artists, however now we can’t go back from this virtual experience, and everything indicates that the future is hybrid.