March 10, 2020 -- The American Physical Society (APS) has formally endorsed the Virtual APS March Meeting as an alternative solution to its annual meeting for knowledge sharing between presenters and attendees. This effort is a result of the organization's decision last week to cancel its conference scheduled for March 2-6 in Denver.
The APS is a nonprofit membership organization focused on advancement and diffusion of scientific knowledge focused on physics. With over 55,000 members, the annual meeting was set to draw over 10,000 attendees to Denver.
The virtual meeting was conceived and went live within two days of the original show cancellation on March 7. As of March 10, the site has over 120 presentations uploaded (most with video narration by presenters), over 7,000 users, and more than 41,000 page views. Site visitors can browse the originally scheduled sessions or find presentations by the date and time they would have been presented at the show.
The development of the site was led by a team at Q-CRTL, a quantum computing startup that was set to participate at the APS March conference. In collaboration with several other quantum technology startups and researchers, Q-CRTL was able to find a solution that would still allow the scientific community to come together to share knowledge.
While this solution was developed in response to the ongoing coronavirus crisis, Q-CRTL representatives believe that the technology can be expanded to support future meetings to mitigate emissions-intensive international travel.
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