COVID-19 Update

Due to the evolving COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic, our team was closely monitoring the development of the outbreak.

ACM Celebration of Women in Computing: womENcourage 2020 (conference, career fair and hackathon) is currently still scheduled to be held as planned. However it was decided to run it as an online virtual event after discussing various contingency plans with the international steering committee (on 4 May 2020) to ensure that the event can take place in a safe manner in line with guidelines provided by the ACM.

We are sad to remove the component of face-to-face interaction in a physical environment and to cancel the local travel experience and cultural program of the event. However we say #ExperienceAzerbaijanLater with a special welcome pack offer for our international attendees, courtesy of the Azerbaijan Convention Bureau. At the same time the organizing committee is committed to deliver the program as close to the initially planned content as possible.

We are still receiving contributions via EasyChair and emails, and looking forward to excellent poster submissions (until 31 May) and workshop/tutorial proposals (until 30 June).

We believe that an online virtual event provides the right balance between the important scientific and societal mission served by womENcourage 2020 and the health and welfare of our attendees.

The womENcourage 2020 team would like to thank all participants, volunteers and speakers for their support and patience in this difficult time. We are grateful to all for the time and energy they have and continue to devote to our event.

We are following updates about the situation from the Operational Headquarters under the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Azerbaijan, which is working closely with the World Health Organisation (WHO). You may want to check the Azerbaijan Tourism Board COVID-19 advisory regularly at https://azerbaijan.travel/covid-19-en.