• In-person major international conferences typically cost $3000 to attend
• Only one person from a lab typically can attend (due to cost)
• Mainly only authors attend (due to cost)
• The environmental impact of travel
• Visa problems are restricting ability to travel
  

The virtual ICPR conference addresses the above issues, but reduces accidental face-to-face interactions. However, being virtual allows new possibilities.

Innovations that we are trying are:

• Many (50+ depending on the paper topics) smaller thematic sessions that allow easier interactions between and with authors. Delegates can attend as many or as few sessions as they wish.

• Sessions are concentrated over 5 hours, but spread across 5 days and 2 weeks to give delegates space for their normal professional lives.

• Extensive recording, so delegates can catch up on sessions they missed due to concurrent sessions or personal timetable conflicts.

• Open the conference platform 1 week before the conference, to allow browsing of the abstracts, papers, and short and long videos. This will make it easier to identify thematic sessions to attend, and authors to contact (using each paper's persistent chat interface).

• Low attendance cost for both authors and other delegates

Papers will have the same paper length, reviewing, and quality as the in-person ICPRs.
Papers will be published by Springer in their LNCS series.