Update IYS — 15 May 2020

Due to the restrictions imposed worldwide to reduce the spread of the Covid-19, the ICA made a decision in March that the IYS would become a 2-year celebration of sound. For a full report on the extension, please see sound2020.org/news/coronavirus/. The extension allows for both postponed events and new events and activities scheduled for the 2021 to be included in the list of IYS events.

Two major changes are related to the students’ competition and the IYS summary/overview event:

• The deadlines for the submission of the proposals for the students competition has been extended to the end of 2020 with the winners to be announced at the time of a major international acoustics meeting in 2021. Full details of the competition are available from the Student Competition tab.
• The IYS summary/overview event will also be rescheduled for a suitable international meeting late in 2021.

Over the recent months we have all become more familiar with the use of on-line meetings and teaching. It has also become clear that social distancing and restrictions on travel will continue for many more months. So rather than postpone many acoustics conferences and seminars, their organizers have decided to convert them into e-conferences. For the national and regional meetings this is a practical way to ensure continuity. For international meetings there is the additional challenge of different time zones meaning that some of the participants may need to participate in normal sleeping hours. However there are options being trialed such as duplicating interactive sessions within suitable time periods. We encourage participation in these events and for the inclusion of IYS outreach activities using various modes of communication and social media to promote them. For example the Wiki4YearOfSound2020, a campaign to improve Wikipedia articles related to sound, is hosting an on-line interactive welcome and tutorial on 29 June in place of a workshop.

The video ‘Sounds of Our World’ produced for the IYS with the support of I-INCE is now available in two versions:

• A 9 min version downloadable from the IYS web-site in mp4 format or viewed via Youtube – www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK-ApCMQNhY&t=8s, and
• A 2 min version downloadable from the IYS web-site in mp4 format (351 MB) or viewed via Youtube – www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6HgT1iujwQ&t=2s.

There are many other web-based resources that are available for free download at the Resources tab of the IYS web-site.

Please ensure that you Contact Us to update listings and to add new activities and resources.

Marion Burgess and Michael Taroudakis

Co-Organisers IYS 2020-21