Travel
If you fly via Schiphol (Amsterdam airport), keep an eye on the website as it tends to be busy, especially when departing. Upon arrival you can best take the train to Amsterdam Central, Amsterdam Zuid or Amsterdam RAI. Take care that you enter the correct train as the train to Amsterdam Zuid does not stop at Amsterdam Central and vice versa! You can order an online train ticket here, and according to this info you do not have to ‘check in’, you only use the QR code to open gates.
In Amsterdam you can use the public transport by metro or subway (we only have a few subways). You can buy hourly and day passes at the GVB vending machines which are located at train and subway stations. A public transport map can be found here (pdf).
The best mode or transport is the bike, but be careful for the tram track, as your from wheel will get stuck of you do not cross it obliquely enough. On central station, Star Bikes seems to get good reviews and offers a bike for 21 euro’s for 4 days. Mind that this is a typical Dutch bike with pedal brake (i.e. no hand brakes), but they also have other bikes.
When public transport stops their service at night you can take a taxi or uber.
Sleeping
The ultimate experience is obviously renting a house boat, but these are rare and/or expensive. We made a small movie to show you some options, as hotels seems to be pretty full. Hope it helps somewhat, otherwise please contact us.
Venue
The main activities will take place in and around the Oudemanhuispoort in Amsterdam. It is located very centrally in a beautiful old part of the city center. Indeed, you read it well, it is a physical location, not a zoom url. We are investigating how to be inclusive for people who cannot physically be present. Since we are an enthusiastic but small team, with limited resources and little experience with (successful) hybrid events, our main focus is the physical event, but feel free to reach out if you have nice ideas about hybrid possibilities.
Wayfinding
Furthermore, we created 2 practical Google maps:
VSAC venues
VSAC evening tips
Take Covid into account
As most of you have experienced is that circumstances can change rapidly, both in positive and negative directions. There are currently no covid restrictions in the Netherlands but travellers outside the EU need to have vaccinations, more info here.
We strongly urge all participants to do self testing before coming to the conference. You will also be handed out one self test at the venue. Masking regulations are absent in The Netherlands and we are considering the options for our event. The lecture hall is rather large with a capacity about 2.5 times the number of visitors and we try to distribute the posters and demonstrations in two spaces to avoid crowding.