I've been thinking about how we can use what we learned about remote work & virtual meetings from the pandemic. It would be great if we didn't have to release lots of carbon to meet, and could live wherever we wanted. But, there are downsides to virtual everything, particularly with our current tech & practices.
Should we really be trying to go back to how things were? Can we learn from our pandemic experience? What are the best practices & tech for setting up virtual and hybrid meetings? Do we really need VR and avatars for virtual/hybrid to work? Are there advantages, for certain kinds of people, of virtual platforms?
This is likely a personal preference: I think virtual works as well as in-person when communication is mostly one-directional, e.g. prepared talks and, to some extent, poster sessions. If conferences are mainly talks and posters, I think they should be virtual.
I am hoping that n-way virtual communication could be better with better organization and technology. Places like CERN have been doing hybrid & virtual meetings for a long time. Can we learn from them? https://qz.com/1832018/how-physicists-solved-your-zoom-video-conferencing-problems
Now to be a bit cynical -- I think those in charge are those that did/do well in our old/current system, but that system is not great for everyone. Again, this is personal, but I'm better at expressing myself in writing. I'm more likely to ask a question at a conference if I can enter a virtual queue. God I dread mixing at conferences. This one time there was "science speed dating" at a conference. It was torture. Maybe for some people sometimes virtual can be better?
Anyways, I thought I'd use this virtual platform to bring up these ideas! I know many disagree on this and are happy to get back to conferences. I'd also like to mention that for people who continue to be concerned about COVID, going back to normal is not yet possible (will it ever be??). For me, this article rings true: "For those still trying to duck covid, the isolation is worse than ever" https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/10/26/covid-pandemic-still-isolating/
@kristinmbranson - As someone who asked way way way too many questions in person in conferences, as often as not because nobody else was asking much of anything, I've been particularly delighted by the virtual conferences I've attended where far more people have been willing to ask questions--lots of really interesting, knowledgeable questions.
Strangely enough, at the first in-person conference I went to post-Covid, the trend continued--people were considerably more willing to ask questions than they had been pre-pandemic, and I think this really enhanced the meeting. I don't expect it to last, however, as there is no reason to believe that the previous norm wasn't a stable equilibrium given people's distribution of personalities.
However, a lot of hybrid conferences don't handle questions well at all--one or the other (or both!) of the channels ends up being shortchanged when it comes to questions.
So I don't know how to solve that aspect of the problem.
(I do wonder who likes scientific speed-dating at conferences. We're a pretty introverted bunch on average. I am roughly as drained after such things as after 8 hours of talks. Oh well.)
@albertcardona @ichoran Ya, it's a mistake I won't make again 😅
@albertcardona Very useful to have enough people like you to keep introverts like me from disappearing completely! Thanks for advocating for Mastodon and linking Kristin's explanation of its features and merits!
@ichoran You are welcome! On Mastodon: federated, open source, crowd-funded, and customizable. What’s not to like. A modern version of IRC, done right.
@ichoran I miss your questions! Honestly one of the reasons I took the job at Janelia to begin with was your questions when I interviewed -- someone had thought about the same things I was thinking about! It's great to find you on mastodon!
Interesting to know that conferences have changed!! I have only been to CVPR in person, which is always weird.
I agree that we are not doing well at organizing hybrid. I think we're much better at all virtual, but maybe we could be better at hybrid if we tried, though maybe the incentives aren't there.
@kristinmbranson - "Finding" me on Mastodon isn't a coincidence! I am here because of your recommendation, which I found because Albert tweeted about it.
So it's more like you lured me here!
Whether Mastodon has any staying power remains to be seen. Its biggest selling points seem to be "no algorithm", which isn't even true--it just is a very very simple, completely open algorithm; and open/free. But this doesn't necessarily make it align with the philosophical justification for public discourse, especially the "marketplace of ideas" ones. Twitter etc have pretty conclusively demonstrated that with some formulations of the idea-economy, in fact, bad ideas win, or at least do way way better than they have any right to. My instinct, sans any clear idea let alone a proof of properties or empirical evidence to support it, is that a solution will actually require a *lot* of algorithm to compensate for the depersonalizing effects of interacting in text remotely instead of in person. And if someone does manage to do that, it'd leave Mastodon without very much of a mission. But that's okay. Google+ didn't last long, and it wasn't a big deal that it didn't.
@ichoran @kristinmbranson I enjoy scientific speed dating at conferences: best way to meet everyone quickly. Given it’s voluntary participation character, I didn’t expect anyone ever to join in if they didn’t want to. But, also loving IRC channels and the deferred communication style of email, I see that adding a parallel virtual gathering (perhaps gathertown if not plain IRC or its modern icky brother, slack) could serve well a good fraction of participants.