Conferencing in the time of COVID-19

I just attended the annual meeting for Ecological Society of America (ESA), my first virtual conference! While I am disappointed that I couldn’t see everyone in person and visit Salt Lake City for the first time, virtual ESA 2020 had its benefits. It also had some downsides.

The Positives

The virtual format allowed me to interact with and digest the content of talks more easily. I could pause and look at figures & equations in detail, solving the age-old problem of presenters throwing a bunch of math onto a slide and expecting the audience to digest it in ~15 seconds (mea culpa). The ability to watch talks on my own time also meant that I could take the time I needed to jot down some notes, process, and reflect on the cool science I just heard about. I was also able to ask more questions and with more detail than in-person conferences. Also, if a talk wasn’t what I’d expected, I could get up and leave in the middle, which would be quite rude in-person–I promise I didn’t do this very often!

The Negatives

However, virtual conferences come with some disadvantages. In particular, I had a lot of trouble accessing the synchronous live Q & A sessions, and I eventually gave up on this. I think that it will be hard to replace the interactions and networking that happens at in-person conferences, but hopefully we can come up with more creative solutions. I was disappointed that many people submitting only slides for the talks, which (to be honest) I haven’t taken the time to look though many of these yet. I understand that there may be some barriers to recording a talk–listening to my voice on video is one of my least favorite things, and it took a few tries to record–but the videos are more compelling, give way more information than just your slides, and you will reach a wider audience. Also, though the online format really lends itself to asking and answering questions, I was also disappointed at how few questions were asked on many of the talks I viewed. Perhaps some of these downsides can be improved upon, especially for conferences later this year which have more time switch to a virtual format, invest in hosting platforms, and develop new ways for us to interact in a COVID-19 world.

Will Covid-19 change conferences for the better?

Shortcomings aside, we should all give major thanks to the organizing committee, who turned ESA into a virtual conference on a short time-frame. Transitioning to all-virtual conferences is certainly a change for most of us, but I hope this experience will make future conferences more accessible to all, less fossil-fuel intensive (by reducing travel), and provide a diversity of ways to interact with other scientists.

Another upside of virtual conferences is that I now have a recorded research talk to share with the world. If you missed ESA, you can check out my talk here!