The future of conferences: lessons from Europe's largest online geoscience conference

Abstract

Abstract. In the early months of 2020, as the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) swept across the globe, millions of people were required to make drastic changes to their lives to help contain the impact of the virus. Among those changes, scientific conferences of every type and size were forced to cancel or postpone in order to protect public health. Included in these was the European Geosciences Union (EGU) 2020 General Assembly, an annual conference for Earth, planetary, and space scientists, scheduled to be held in Vienna, Austria, in May 2020. After a 6-week period of changing the format to an online alternative, attendees of the newly designed EGU20: Sharing Geoscience Online took part in the first geoscience conference of its size to go fully online. This paper explores the feedback provided by participants following this experimental conference and identifies four key themes that emerged from an analysis of the following questions: what did attendees miss from a regular meeting, and to what extent did going online impact the event itself, both in terms of challenges and opportunities? The themes identified are “connecting”, “engagement”, “environment”, and “accessibility”. These themes include concepts relating to discussions of the value of informal connections and spontaneous scientific discovery during conferences, the necessity of considering the environmental cost of in-person meetings, and the opportunities for widening participation in science by investing in accessibility. The responses in these themes cover the spectrum of experiences of participants, from positive to negative, and raise important questions about what conference providers of the future will need to do to meet the needs of the scientific community in the years following this coronavirus outbreak.

The Power Hour of Writing: An empirical evaluation of our online writing community

“…However, a communal response analysis has been possible: Qualitative content analysis (see Erlingsson & Brysiewicz, 2017) was used to interpret the responses to the survey. This paper works from the premise that any approach that uses a qualitative content analysis should be guided by the following six steps: Formulation of research question; selection of samples to be analysed; definition of categories to be analysed; outline and implementation of coding process; trustworthiness of coding; and analysis of the results of the coding process (Gibson et al, 2021;Hsieh & Shannon, 2005).…”

Planning virtual and hybrid events: steps to improve inclusion and accessibility

“…The appropriate use of time zones is a common issue faced by virtual meetings, with significant planning required to ensure time zones are accessible to as many people as possible. Clear communication (e.g., time zone specific programs) is vital to ensure full inclusion (Gichora, 2010;Niner, 2020;Gibson, 2021). Virtual events often use a range of technologies, with many of these rapidly changing or being replaced.…”

“…Providing clear instructions on how to submit questions or how to attend any virtual activities or networking opportunities, with detailed explanations or access to help pages for any new technologies being implemented is crucial to avoid inadvertent exclusion (Raby and Madden, 2021). Many event reviews discuss the challenges in creating effective networking environments and fostering participant engagement during online meetings (e.g., Fulcher, 2020;Correia, 2021;Gibson, 2021;Raby and Madden, 2021). In particular, virtual poster sessions have often been difficult to design with limited success in promoting engaging networking, but introducing the inclusion of other media (e.g., videos, QR codes) could enhance engagement (Raby and Madden, 2021).…”

“…Often, inclusion of accessibility considerations for virtual events is not a priority of review articles, with many elements missing from the current literature. For example, live closed captions or subtitles for virtual events are rarely mentioned, as these may not have been considered far enough in advance for effective implementation (Gibson et al, 2021) but, these are crucial for inclusion of those with certain disabilities and participants with different first languages to the conference (Seery and Flaharty, 2020;Wu et al, 2022). The benefits of effective subtitles and transcriptions in online environments are clear, with higher engagement from people with hearing and motion impairments in online lessons (Federico and Furini, 2012).…”

“…As the breadth of the literature shows, each online conference will have different audiences, goals, and ways of planning (e.g., Gichora, 2010;Niner, 2020;Gibson, 2021;Raby and Madden, 2021). However, by utilizing diverse mechanisms for running conferences, novel and inclusive experiences can be had by all participants of a virtual or hybrid conference, both technologically and socially.…”