How Does the AIMS Virtual Conference Work?

Program & Scheduling
Process for Acceptance
Presentation Format
Security

Program and Scheduling Practices

The AIMS Virtual Conference is a free, virtual event. The conference features activities that investigate receptions of the ancient world in a variety of formats: individual 20-minute papers, three-paper panels, roundtables, workshops, poster sessions, lightning sessions, playthroughs, live multiplayer games, technical demonstrations, creative showcases, creator interviews, and other activities. 

All presentations featured at the AIMS annual meeting are derived from proposals we receive through the public portal linked to the CFP and our website, or are arranged by our standing committees. Depending on format, some presentations can be standalone events, while individual 20-minute paper presentations are grouped into panels according to emergent themes among the pool, within the purview of the AIMS conference committee. 

For attendees to fully enjoy the wide variety of activities available at the conference, we only schedule one live event at a time. While we have built our live program around the Eastern Time workday, we schedule presenters according to reasonable waking hours locally. With activities taking place at various times of day throughout the conference period, AIMS strives to be open and accessible to participants in time zones around the world. 

What’s the Process for Acceptance?

The AIMS ethos prioritizes inclusion, and that commitment extends to how we approach proposals for this conference. 

AIMS follows a multi-step process for determining inclusion in the conference. The conference committee (composed of the Board of Directors, consisting of the three officers and the committee chairs, and the DEI committee) first conducts a blind read of the submissions and sorts them into three categories: approve, seek clarification, and proposals not suitable for the conference according to our publicized parameters. The conference committee then conducts an unmasked review of submissions in case that information would lead to fostering more robust representation of perspectives that tend to be underrepresented in academia and media. In the case of proposals that might be pertinent and raise questions that members of the conference committee feel could impact acceptance, we reach out to the proposer(s) with constructive questions and offer a “revise and resubmit” opportunity. 

AIMS’s practice is to draw its session moderators from among our membership and its collective expertise. As we grow our base of expertise among our members, we will expand the areas of the world whose receptions of antiquity we can platform.

Presentation formatting: pre-recorded and live

To allow all participants greater access to the research presentations, AIMS has adopted the practice of offering pre-recorded presentations that can be viewed asynchronously by registrants for roughly two weeks prior to and after the conference. During the live sessions at the conference, presenters briefly recap their presentations and then spend most of their respective sessions in discussion with the audience and each other. To offer support for participants who may benefit from a visual supplement to the audio of these recordings, we also require pre-recorded presentations to be accurately captioned; we provide confirmed presenters with instructions for this process. 

We record all live sessions and post them on our public YouTube channel (Antiquity in Media Studies YouTube page). Presenters retain the rights to their own intellectual property and can opt to not have their presentations publicly available after the end of the conference on the AIMS YouTube channel.

Conference Security

AIMS takes security at its virtual conference very seriously. Anyone who wishes to participate in the AIMS Conference as presenters, panelists, moderators, or attendees must agree to abide by the AIMS Conference Code of Conduct. Here is the Code of Conduct used at the 2023 AIMS Conference. Only registered attendees are allowed access to the virtual rooms. Refusal to adhere to the Code of Conduct will result in being asked to leave or being ejected from the conference space.