25th IUCr Congress and its background

History

Czechoslovakia was accepted into the IUCr immediately after the first IUCr Congress in Boston, MA, USA, in 1948 as the fifth member together with USA, UK, Norway and Canada. The membership of the Czechoslovak National Committee in the IUCr was guaranteed originally by Charles University; later this was taken over by the Academy of Sciences and then the Czech and Slovak Crystallographic Association (CSCA) in 2017. A “meeting of crystallographers on special topics in structure analysis” was started by A. Kochanovská in 1954 at the headquarters of the Academy of Sciences and a long series of these traditional one-day seminars was established. Originally, the meetings, called “Discussions”, were organized under the head of the Institute of Technical Physics of the Academy of Sciences, later under the head of the Czechoslovak Society for Science and Technology and finally the CSCA. In 2016, the anniversary 300th Discussions Meeting on Recent Advances in Structure Analysis was organized in Prague.

The formal recognition of the Crystallographic Association – Krystalografická společnost as a stand-alone society was achieved on 6 February 1991. The logo of the association was designed by Z. Zikmund, and variations of it have been used as logos for different meetings including the 25th IUCr Congress. The Executive Committee, headed by the president and secretary, is responsible to the Scientific Board for all activities. All bodies and officers are now elected for a five-year period. See www.xray.cz for current officers and a full list of members of the Scientific Board.

A continuous series of Annual CSCA Conferences began in 1980. At these meetings, people interested in crystallography can meet for four days and discuss informally all scientific problems and directions of future activities of the CSCA. The conference is devoted to diffraction and non-diffraction techniques and methods for structural studies of compounds, applications of diffraction methods in practice, and the use of techniques in materials science, physics, chemistry and biology. The meetings are organized in different places in Bohemia and Moravia. Besides general and broad crystallographic topics, several focused meetings are organized. Recently, these have included Experimental methods in X-ray and neutron analysis, Computational methods, Small-angle scattering and Non-diffraction techniques for structural studies. Nowadays, the conference is named Struktura xxxx including the year. The usual participation at these annual meetings is 70–100 people.

A biennial student symposium is organized as part of the annual conference. The session contains student works – BSc, MSc and PhD theses in the field of crystallography, study of structures and microstructures mainly by X-ray and neutron techniques. Students from different universities in the Czech and Slovak Republics take part at this meeting. The presentations are evaluated by a wide committee and finally the best students are awarded.

In addition to general plenary lectures and other common contributions, sessions and highly specialized courses are usually organized in parallel for bio-crystallographers (course on protein crystallography – general, preparation of measurements and data collection, macromolecular structure refinement, precision and reliability) and people more directed to powder diffraction and materials science (course on the study of the real structure of materials, phase analysis). Courses on software are organized as well (structure databases, programs Jana, Maud, Mstruct, etc.). A course on the use of groups in crystallography was well attended, in particular.

IUCr2020

After several attempts, in 2014 we won the bid for the 25th IUCr Congress. We were looking forward to it and working hard for its preparation. We organized the workshop Current trends and future of crystallography in May 2019, connected with the meeting of the International Programme Committee. Both appeared to be very useful and we recommended such meetings also to future organizers of IUCr Congresses. Everything was going well till March 2020 when COVID-19 appeared. We found it was basically impossible to organize a classical congress in August 2020, and a quick virtual meeting of the IUCr Executive Committee unanimously decided to postpone the Congress to August 2021. This decision was accepted basically by all already registered people and companies with frequent comments that in 2021 people may be even more eager to attend the congress. However, at that time I was already thinking that we may only be postponing the problem.

Struktura 2020

Because we were organizing such a big congress in 2020, we did not plan to hold Struktura 2020. However, when the Congress was postponed we returned to it and decided to prepare Struktura 2020 for the end of November, when, we all hoped, the situation with COVID should have stabilized. Moreover, we did not expect a participation of over 100. The limit for indoor events was varying over time but in summer was as high as 500 so we did not expect problems. We agreed on the venue – a hotel in Tabor, a beautiful historical town about an hour's drive south of Prague – for two reasons. Struktura 2016 was held there, where we had a very good experience with the hotel and location, and the venue was also that planned for the largest pre-IUCr Congress workshop on electron crystallography.

Unfortunately, by the time we reached September, the pandemic was not decelerating but vice versa. At that time, it was decided to organize a hybrid congress from the hotel with the possibility for remote participants. We purchased better equipment such as cameras and sound systems and started preparation. We kept that idea till the beginning of November when it became clear that no real meeting would be allowed and possible and the only way was to prepare for a purely virtual conference. Before that point, we had already asked participants for their opinion. Most of them approved both real and virtual participation. Some of them said "No, I am only interested in a real meeting, not a virtual one“ and cancelled their participation. A few cancelled their lectures but approved their virtual passive participation. Others decided not to come to Tabor but were able to give a virtual lecture. In the end, we had about the same number of people as expected for a real conference (about 70).

We decided to host the virtual meeting on the Zoom platform as this was widely used and well known. We prepared a small TV-like studio center in one seminar room of Charles University, where a few presentations were given. The conference (25–27 November) had a few sessions as planned, for example on the use of synchrotron radiation, and it also included the first virtual student symposium and competition. In this competition, the main evaluation takes in a complex picture (scientific significance, contribution of the student, presentation quality, impression given by the speaker); however, just for interest, we evaluated the presentation skills of the speaker separately, i.e. how he/she is able to sell their work, almost regardless of the content. It was expected that in virtual form, these features would be suppressed. However, just the opposite was found, surprisingly. It seems that these skills are also important for virtual presentations. At the end of each day, the Zoom meeting remained open for 1–2 hours for free discussion.

So, our first virtual conference went very well, even though the participants expressed their hope to meet in person next time. The organization was quite easy and low cost. There were no technical problems. All the lectures were available from recordings in the Zoom cloud for registered participants for two months and then they were downloaded to our local storage media.

IUCr2021

In January 2021, we resumed communication with the IPC, keynote speakers, co-chairs and invited speakers in sessions to find out their plans.

The overall situation with COVID is very complicated. At the moment nobody knows anything definite about this summer. Currently, we cannot guarantee whether we will be allowed to organize the Congress in the Congress Centre or, if so, under which specific regulations. People don't know if they will be able to come. Therefore, we have started to prepare the Congress as primarily a virtual one but we would like to keep open the possibility of a real part till the last possible moment, i.e. we are retaining the idea of hybrid congress. The time when, I think, we can know more should be in June but not much earlier.

Up to now, we have received answers from about two thirds of the people mentioned above with the following statistics:

About 40% of people are still going to travel to Prague, if possible.

About 15% of people plan to do the same, but they see more problems.

About 15% of people would also like to come but think that it is not very likely.

About 25% cannot come but approved virtual participation.

Actually all the above approved virtual participation.

About 5% had to cancel their participation.

Hybrid system

Recently, we revisited the Prague Congress Centre, mainly to see their registration and presentation system for real/hybrid/virtual events and we were all quite happy with its flexibility. The local Czech company has been developing it for more than 10 years, has used it for even larger conferences than the IUCr Congress and during the last year, has focused on improving and extending the features for virtual or hybrid types of events and used it for such meetings. Over time, they have removed some things/features that had the potential to cause technical and/or quality problems. The system offers several types of virtual rooms (sessions, workshops, meetings) and a wide range of "poster" presentations, which can include videos, etc. Companies can have space on the website in the form of a 2D or 3D virtual booth, which allows the inclusion of descriptions, photos and videos and the possibility of multiple chats with individual customers. Every visit to the booth is recorded, with the list of visitors being sent to the exhibitor immediately after the event. Nothing anonymous is allowed.

Sessions

In principle, there is not much difference if the speakers or chairs are on-site or remote. The system does not require any installation of special software by the participants. Several browsers are supported. Two weeks before the lecture, registered participants can post questions in the lecture's Discussion window, which the speaker can answer there at any time. As a typical example, a participant can ask if some problem will be discussed in the lecture.

Individual speakers can communicate with technicians and must upload either a full pre-recorded presentation including sound (this could be useful, for instance, when there is a time difference; these types of presentations are now easy to prepare, e.g. in PowerPoint) or just a pure presentation. Everything can be tested.

A short time before the session all speakers and co-chairs of the session can communicate live in real time. 

The session is streamed for remote participants. The presentations are always run from the local server in Prague. This is to avoid the possibility of a lower quality connection from the speaker. However, if the speaker is online, he/she has full control of the presentation. During the lecture any participant can type questions into the corresponding Chat window, which is visible by all participants (which helps to avoid duplicate questions). The moderator/co-chair selects questions from the Chat and asks the speaker in the discussion. This discussion is also recorded. No anonymous comments are possible.

Any remaining questions can be moved by the speaker from Chat to Discussion and answered any time later. Both Discussion and Chat windows are accessible all the time but the Chat window is only active during the session. The lectures can be made available for registered participants for two months without extra cost. Different kinds of "rooms" are possible. For workshops, the set-up is similar to Zoom. Anybody can share screens, all participants can be seen.

All the tools for a hybrid congress have been prepared. However, now we can only wait and hope for a successful vaccination program to suppress the spread of the virus.