Dear Colleagues, we are excited to announce the program for the first PolMeth Europe. You can find all the core information about the conference---including the academic program---on the conference homepage. https://polmeth-europe.github.io/ 1 The Conference Venue We will meet for the conference on https://gather.town.<https://gather.town/> IMPORTANT: You will need an access code to enter the conference venue. Please make sure to register at the conference homepage so that we can reach out to you with the necessary details. 2 Conference Registration If you want to join us as a participant, please register on the conference webpage until Friday March 12th. Registration is free of charge. 3 General Spirit of the Conference We are eager to facilitate an exciting and productive conference that is at the same time also an enjoyable social event. At a conference we expose our new ideas to a larger audience of colleagues which is always a leap of faith. As organisers of the conference, we formulated a mission statement that reflects our values and summarises the spirit of the event we imagine. PolMeth Europe Mission Statement We appreciate the contribution of each participant and are curious about what they are proposing. Our comments intend to help improve their work. In offering feedback, we are mindful that we all have different personal backgrounds and different academic upbringings. We consider our diversity to be one of our core assets. Our different viewpoints ultimately help further our joint goal: better science. 4 Social Events During PolMeth Europe To further the community building, we also envisioned social events during the conference. polmeth::rejuvenate(paper) A lot of us have papers on which we already worked for maybe already a couple of weeks or even months. At one point, however, the project came to an end. Not because it was particularly bad, but more important things came along that crowded out our attention for the project. A considerable amount of time already went into this research project, which means there are sunk costs. It is a pity that these papers are dormant in our drawers. What if someone came along who thinks that this project is worth a fresh look and would help you realise it? At PolMeth, we want to create a market where people can meet to unearth the sunk costs in these projects. We want to match those who have a project with those who might have an interest in restarting it. In our virtual conference space, there will be a large poster where you can post your paper projects. Other participants can read the abstracts and signal interest in a particular project. That way, the original author knows whether there is any interest from others to follow up and can decide to reach out to potential co-authors to keep working on things. In case you are interested to participate, please send us via email the abstract of your dormant paper that you have already been working on ideally until March 12th. We will then add it to the mural with the paper proposals. We are keen to see this initiative at work and are looking for a dedicated group of peers to take this idea even further. Why not establishing such a paper market place at a larger scale? If you want to discuss how to develop this market place, meet me (Chris Arnold) anywhere in the conference space. Feedback Murals At a first conference of what has to ambition of becoming one of many, feedback is crucial to adapt the format to the need of participants. Does the workshop meet all expectations? What worked well? Where is room for improvement? In addition, researchers also very often have good ideas about things that would be awesome to do or engage in beyond just the academic event. Think of all kind of infrastructures, platforms, discussions, software, data et cetera that such a PolMeth Europe community could create and benefit from. We want to give a space to all these ideas that might be in the back of your mind. Please find a virtual mural at the central plaza on gather.town where you can leave your feedback. Social Events on Gather.Town The platform itself is a great place to socialise. Always feel free to hang out there before and after the main events. We are also planning a special event on Friday evening once all panels are over. We look forward to welcoming you on gather.town next week! All the best, The PolMeth Europe Conference Team