The second edition of the CIRMMT-OICRM-BRAMS Student Symposium (COBS) happened quite differently this year. Faced with numerous limitations due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the organizing committee had no choice but to turn the event into some form of virtual conference. The solution was to create a website (www.ccob-cobs.org) where all presentations would be stored and made accessible to the community.
The online platform was launched on June 4th containing all poster and slide presentations by the students of all three centres organized by subject area:
- Education and learning
- Musicology and politics
- Instruments, biomechanics, and performance
- Perception and psychology
- Creative musical practices
These presentations feature an audio commentary by the respective authors and remain available online to reach as many people as possible. To ensure a successful experience for the users and high quality of video and sound, the organizing committee made sure to standardize the preparation process, providing presenters with specific guidelines as to which software to use and how to record the presentation. Translations of the abstracts were also included.
One innovative element on the platform is the possibility to interact with presenters by leaving them comments. This offers the users a unique opportunity to provide feedback and dwell on more profound discussions.
The keynote address, presented by Prof. Ons Barnat from the Music Department at UQAM, was live-streamed on Zoom on June 4th at 3:00pm followed by a lively 5à7. The recording of Barnat's presentation is also included on COBS' website (and now available on CIRMMT's YouTube channel as well).