The CyberPunk Culture Conference 2020 (#cpcc20) took place as a digital, online conference on July 9-10.
Short Introduction to the theme:
The complexities of our contemporary techno-cultural age are embodied not in the science fiction (sf) of that ‘Golden Age’ period in the 1940s and 1950s but, instead, a cyberpunk period that emerged as a corpus of fictive thought experiments in the 1980s, evolved into diverse cyberpunk waves in the 1990s and 2000s, and is now best understood as what Thomas Foster calls a “sea change into a more generalized cultural formation” (xiv), a cultural formation that dominates our 21st-century techno-digital landscapes. To put it directly: we are living in inescapable cyberpunk futures bleeding into the interstices of our present, and these cyberpunk realities intersect with our mainstream culture at every possible angle.
How do I present?
There are two forms of presentation which you can choose from:
Slides & Text: For this form of presentation you will need to send us your slides (as individual jpg or png images) and presentation text as a file folder. We will then upload these into a blog post.
Video: For this form of presentation you will need to record a lecture, either film yourself delivering it or as a voice over on your slides. You will upload this to a video site (such as youtube or vimeo) and we will embed the file into a blog post here on this site.
Length of presentation: Digital attention is limited and thus, to allow more interaction and a wider range of presentations, your video needs to be between 5 and 10 minutes. Your slides-and-text presentation needs to be no more than 12 slides and 1200 words. These are fixed limits, no exceptions. Sorry, you need to be brief and on-point. We reserve the right to cancel your presentation should you exceed these limits.
How will the conference work?
Check out our detailed information at “How it works…”
The short version: Presentations will be posted as blog posts on this website for attendees to read or view the presentation. A q&a session will then be held on a reserved chat server. A keynote will be held via the same mechanism (only longer) and a roundtable will be presented “live” via Zoom webinar with a similar live chat on the chat server. The chats will be available for one week after initial presentation, then will be archived. All materials presented and the discussions will be archived on this website for reviewing at a later date.
How can I comment?
All commenting will take place on a designated chat server on an app called Discord. You will need to install the app (phone, desktop) to participate in discussions. As online activities seem to attract a fair amount of trolling, we will restrict access to the Discord-server to registered participants of the conference and we reserve the right to moderate. In the days before the conference, all registered users will receive the invitation link to our Discord server and the login code. Discord allows for both text and audio-based chats. We will restrict q&a sessions to text-based only. Audio chats are open for informal meetings.
What about privacy?
A cyberconference is a rather public event and privacy might be a concern for presenters and viewers. We will therefore request a registration for the event and limit active commenting to registered participants only. You may apply for registration during the event, but we cannot guarantee prompt reply, so please be timely in your registration once it is open. To register you will need to provide your name and an email-address (preferably an institutional/official address).
How is this financed?
A conference is a costly endeavor and mostly sponsored by universities and institutional partners. Good thing about cyberconferences is that they incur far less cost, but that does not mean they are completely free. Software, website, and basic digital services do cost some money. We have set up a donation account with ko-fi.com and ask for donations from registered participants (3 Euro). Any sum generated this way will go towards the technical requirements of this conference and then towards future events organized through this website. Just click on the button below and support us. Thank you.