Baton passed from ACT-I to ACT-X

@MasatakaGoto: “Baton passed from ACT-I to ACT-X” (Masataka Goto), a PDF of the article in the Journal of the VR Society of Japan URL! (5 pages, free of charge) This is based on my experience as a research director of JST ACT-I “Information and the Future” until last year and as a current advisor for ACT-X “Frontiers of Mathematics and Information”.

Dr. Yuichiro Anzai, “Let’s establish the individual.”

• Advice: “Be free to think independently, promote your own research, and become a leading expert in your field.

• The ACT-I was designed with the aim of supporting young researchers with “passion,” with an emphasis on helping them to “establish themselves.

  • Following the success of ACT-I, its successor program, JST ACT-X, continues to develop as “a program that hopes to establish individual young researchers

• 1 ) Supporting young researchers to “establish themselves

• (2) Support young researchers to promote challenging research and development while taking the initiative with free ideas.

• 3 ) Provide opportunities for human exchange that will serve as a foundation for future collaboration by young researchers.

Introduced “an immediate and confidential communication environment through text chat tools” to the interview screening process.

• Text communication in Slack
• Communication between the research director, area advisors, and JST staff on their own computers
• Not visible to applicants.
  • Exchange opinions during presentations and during questioning.
  • Share what opinions and questions you had while listening to the interview presentation.
  • Able to traffic what the research director wants the area advisor to hear in the Q&A session.
• Slack implementation has been dramatically superior
  • Screening of a large number of applicants and diverse disciplines made possible based on in-depth discussions
  • Impossible to just use the usual method of filling out the evaluation sheet after the presentation and sharing that file.

In ACT-I, the standard period of support was set at 1.5 years, and an additional accelerated phase period of 2 years was set for about one-third of the standard period by JST.

• We thought it was important to avoid the stage-gate-like misconception that “only the successful ones will advance to the acceleration phase.”
• Explicit notice that the standard period is the heart of ACT-I’s support
• All young researchers who took on the challenge of a year and a half of research can be proud to be “graduates” of this research area and be able to play an active role thereafter.
  • An important concept for unexplored juniors and unexplored IT
    • We need to make sure that those who were not selected as Super Creators can be proud to be “graduates”.
    • We must ensure that those who did not advance to the Unexplored Advanced are not regarded as “those who could not lead to commercialization”.
• Additional support was made available on request.
  • In fact, many do not wish to.

3 ．Act-I “Information and the Future” area meeting devised by

• Closed outside meetings where all can meet and actively engage in in-depth discussion.

• A place for friendly competition and mutual inspiration

  • Foundation for future collaboration
  • be memorable
  • It is important to provide opportunities for human interaction

• It is difficult for about 70 people to interact with each other in a friendly and memorable way by simply repeating 70 short presentations and Q&A sessions, as is typical at academic conferences.

• (i) Creating an active voice environment through text chat

  • Related:.Announcement Parallel Chat
  • When you have a simple question about the content of a presentation that is far away from your area of expertise, it is less psychologically challenging to post it in a chat room.
    • Other audience members with close expertise provided supplementary explanations, which deepened the understanding of the audience as a whole.
  • Gives more feedback than the usual questioning
    • Visualize what a large audience thought of your presentation
  • Slack content displayed on a small screen in front so that it could be read

• (ii) Use of large, easy-to-read name tags

  • Postcard-sized nameplate with last name in a large, prominent font
  • Print the same information on both sides of the nameplate so that the first and last name can be read even if the nameplate is turned over.
  • Related:.RubyKaigi nameplate
  • Also include the title of the research project
  • The color of the nameplate was changed for each fiscal year so that students could easily identify their peers.

• (iii) Seat assignment

  • To make it easier to talk to people you have never talked to before and to promote interdisciplinary exchange
  • All seating in the presentation rooms and at lunch and dinner were reserved.
  • Once you talk next to each other, it will be easier to talk during breaks, etc.
  • Convincing,指定席メソッドと呼ぼう

• Reflection with KPT

  • All participants reflect on the domain meeting and write a 5-minute summary in Slack at the end of each meeting.
  • An average of about 149 entries are written.

• Area Advisor Talks and Research Summary Talks: 5-minute talks per person when time permits on the program.

  • Content is left up to the speaker

• Alumni Session

  • Researchers (graduates) who have completed their research term may voluntarily participate in area meetings upon agreeing to a confidentiality agreement.
  • After 2020, when the number of presenters will be reduced, we will have time for alumni to report on their recent activities.
    • The Unexplored ITBoost Conference に近い
      • is “voluntary” meaning “available to those who wish to participate”?
      • If that’s the case, then the route is a little different from the unexplored IT that “participates at the request of the PM”
      • In the fifth year (2006) after this trial began, Unexplored said, “By all means, come on over in droves!”
      • Since 2008, there have been so many people who wanted to participate that the time for alumni to report on their recent activities has been overflowing.
      • After that, they stopped taking requests to participate.

• The four regional meetings after FY2020 will be held using Zoom.

  • The audience always showed up, too, and we made an effort to clearly state the family name and the year of adoption.
  • The ability to see each other’s faces during breaks and other times of the day made it possible to interact in a chat-like manner.
  • get-together
    • Zoom’s Breakout Room
    • Random forced shuffling every 15 minutes
  • Advantages for alumni to participate remotely
  • There are many difficulties regarding which is better compared to the physical holding.
    • Definitely useful as a work-around for a time when it was not possible to hold a physical at COVID19
    • Ditto the benefit of facilitating alumni participation.
    • There is fatigue due to prolonged periods of constant frontal viewing.
    • There is a psychological hurdle to starting a conversation in a general shared setting during breaks.
      • When you go to the person you want to talk to in a physical holding and start talking, you start with a conversation between two people, and that conversation is visible to those around you, so people can gradually join in.
      • Zoom starts with a whole broadcast.
      • On the other hand, if you create a breakout room that can be freely entered and exited for individual conversation, the conversation in the room cannot be seen from the outside.
      • I think this is the degree to which Zoom’s UI could be improved in this area.
      • Another solution was the use of Spatial Chat in 2020 at Unexplored Junior (2020 Unexplored Junior SpatialChat).
        • is not very good, and in 2021, the management allocated (rather than randomizing the system) to Zoom’s breakout room
        • Close to [Reserved seat method
      • The 2022 Unexplored Conference Night was a get-together at oVice.
      • I also have the impression that Remo and Gather.town are being tried here and there.

4 ．Act-I “Information and the future” ingenuity in the debriefing session of the results of the

• ACT-I Advanced Research Forum, a public forum for the presentation of results
• A place that attracts attention in an atmosphere different from that of a regular conference presentation
• It is important to provide “a place where people feel it is worth presenting.
  • Professionally staged and hosted stage
  • High-impact visual and musical effects when researchers take the stage
  • Opening and closing videos are shown at the beginning and at the end of the entire event.
  • Attractively designed pamphlets distributed at the event
  • The Unexplored Conference alumni LT may be pretty close in composition, although the number of slots is small.
    • I wish I could afford more, but it looks like I can’t.
• Archives are also important
  • Video recordings of the presentations and posters were made continuously available on the Internet for anyone to view.
  • I completely agree with “archiving is important too.”
    • In addition, the videos of boost meetings and interim presentations are stored in the private Scrapbox, in addition to the publicly available “results reports.
    • Participants from the next and subsequent years can see “what last year’s participants presented” and have the opportunity to learn about the project development process

---

This page is auto-translated from /nishio/ACT-IからACT-Xへ渡されたバトン using DeepL. If you looks something interesting but the auto-translated English is not good enough to understand it, feel free to let me know at @nishio_en. I’m very happy to spread my thought to non-Japanese readers.