Social Programs

Reception & Social Event

Times:

  • Reception
    • July 11 18:00 AM – July 11 19:00 AM (EDT)
  •  Social
    • July 13 15:00 PM – July 13 16:00 PM (EDT)
    • July 14 00:00 PM – July 14 01:00 PM (EDT)

Our welcome reception will be held in Gather.Town. You can find the link through the event listing in Underline. If you still don’t have access to Underline (typically a case for someone who signed up recently), email [email protected]. An email was sent detailing some steps you can take to create an account in case the email from Underline got lost. They are working as fast as they can to resolve these issues.

Back to the reception — if you haven’t checked out Gather.Town, we recommend you do so. It’s a fun virtual space where you can move around and interact with people like you would at a conference. For those new to Gather.Town, you can find an introductory video here. Once in, make your way to the ‘Social event’ room. You will see many tables set up — some labeled, some not. You can find a suitable table or just walk around the space and chat with people. Typically, as you get close to someone, you are able to directly interact with them (your videos will automatically pop up). If you get bored (!) in this room, you can move to the game room where several tables are laid out with games like Draw Battle, Dominion, Colonist, and Poker.

While we are not able to ship drinks to you, we hope you enjoy the welcome reception in a fun, relaxed environment. BYOB!

Student Gathering

Times:

  • July 12 14:00 PM – July 12 15:00 PM (EDT)
  • July 12 23:00 PM – July 13 00:00 PM (EDT)

Student gathering sessions offer opportunities for students to exchange with senior researchers. In this session, the following invited speakers will talk informally about their experience in managing their life and career. Students will have the opportunity to interact with senior researchers in the breakout groups.

Invited Speakers (Session 1):

  • Maria Maistro (University of Copenhagen)
  • Faegheh Hasibi (Radboud University)
  • The Salton Award winner

Invited speakers (Session 2):

  • Peter Bailey (Microsoft)
  • Jin Young Kim (Naver Corp)
  • Salton Award winner

Women in IR (WIR) 2021

Times:

  • July 13 13:00 PM – July 13 14:15 PM (EDT)
  • July 13 22:00 PM – July 13 23:15 PM (EDT)

Women in IR is pleased to announce two virtual meetings to be held during SIGIR 2021. The sessions cover the same topics but are spread out to accommodate all time zones. Last year we invited a large group of panelists to discuss predefined topics.  This year we take a different path which aims at encouraging attendees’ participation on predefined topics and hence no panelists are invited.  All SIGIR’21 attendees, regardless of gender identity, are welcome to attend one or both sessions.  Topics to be covered are:

  1. We distributed a survey to our SIGIR community, asking participants anonymously about the status of their organizations concerning pay transparency, gender pay gap, their interest in finding out, and the community’s interest in leadership workshops. In the first part of the meeting, we will present the results of this survey and potential constructive steps to take and open to the participants who would like to provide constructive solutions.
  2. In the second part of the meeting, we will give a short presentation about “hero culture”. There is a tendency in science to overemphasize the contributions of individuals and to downplay the significance of collective achievement and chance. The presentation will introduce the various facets of this topic and we then hope to have a lively discussion about how this affects women in IR and diversity in general. We are looking forward to a diverse crowd, including heroes and heroines.

Queer in AI

Time:

  • July 12 15:00 PM – July 13 16:30 PM (EDT)

Queer in AI is a community of queer researchers and allies in NLP, AI, and ML. Come to our social to meet and network LGBTQIA+ researchers and discuss queer issues in research. The socials will be hosted on GatherTown, and all event information will remain confidential to respect the privacy and safety of participants. People of all identities, including allies, are invited to attend!

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