An international conference – online
- International
- Sustainability
- Institute for Quantum Electronics (IQE)
About a thousand researchers worldwide participated in the Photonics Online Meetup POM20. A conference of this size usually involves a huge effort on the part of the organising team to arrange accommodation, transfers and meals and prepare the conference venue for the participants. The time commitment and the cost of travel to the conference are also considerable for most participants. Does an online conference bring advantages?
Research conference on 13 January 2020
The international, seven-member organising team, which included Professor Rachel Grange of ETH Zurich, chose the form of an online conference for the external page Photonics Online Meetup 2020. The team prepared the five-hour conference via a web-based instant messaging service. This was advantageous in view of the large time difference between the locations of external page team members, some of whom knew each other only online.
1,100 researchers in 37 countries on 6 continents attended the conference simultaneously. After the conference the team was convinced of its merits. “We will continue to use external page this form for large professional meetings,” said Rachel Grange. “It makes possible a free top-quality conference that is open to all.”
Inclusion, an important topic in research
To provide access to the latest knowledge for all interested parties worldwide was one aim of the conference. This form of conference was also valuable for all those researchers who would not have been able to obtain a visa to enter the physical conference venue or for many younger researchers who could not have afforded a trip. The social media star Mete Atature, physics professor at the University of Cambridge, praised the pet friendliness of online conferences. He even appeared as a "duo" with his cat. However, how did the organising team deal with the disadvantages of meeting online?
Workload in comparison
“Planning and running an online conference is also a lot of work” says Rachel Grange, “but the effort involved is out of proportion to the physical planning and running of a conference of the same size”. This will allow more time for research and family; air travel can be reduced without having to forego the important international exchange among researchers. The organisation team now intends to share the experience of the build-up processes and know-how with interested parties
How to deal with the absence of small talk during breaks
Online conferences cannot replace some aspects of physically being together, such as the small talk that goes on during coffee breaks. Andrea Armani, co-chair of the conference and professor at the University of Southern California, suggested that local hubs be organised by researchers to give participants the opportunity to attend the conference together. This resulted in the designation of 66 physical hubs around the world, one of which was on the Hönggerberg campus of ETH Zurich. It was organised by the “Optics Chapter ETH Zurich” in the Student Project House. Around 635 people met in these hubs worldwide, in larger or smaller groups depending on the time of day or night. There they were able to exchange ideas directly during the coffee breaks. This resulted in a combination of a physical and a virtual meeting that was highly appreciated by the participants. In addition to those who participated at the hubs, around 500 participants joined the conference individually.
A poster session online – how does that work?
The poster session is an important part of every conference and an online conference is no exception. The organising team agreed to make use of external page Twitter for this purpose. They developed guidelines for an appealing design of posters in this format. Since it is not possible to set up a Twitter account from all countries, and not all participants wanted to set up their own account, good planning was necessary to give everyone access to the posters in the run-up to the conference. They were then actively liked, retweeted and commented on online. “This format has potential. We want to expand it at the next conference,” notes Rachel Grange.
New format, new challenges
Tension ran high as it was uncertain whether the IT infrastructure for video conferences provided by the University of Southern California (with technical capacity for 1,000 participants) would be able to handle so much access; whether the network would work well everywhere; and whether the chairpersons and speakers would be able to perform as they had practised, when under stress. In California, two to three IT specialists were always available during the conference, and Andrea Armani was ready to step in as back-up moderator. This all worked well. There is still room for improvement in graphic adaptation of the presentations to fit the online format. What works well for large projections in lecture halls can look overloaded or too static online.
Before and after the conference
The well-developed IT infrastructure and the experience of the University of Southern California with large online courses were essential to the success of the conference. The new rules and short training sessions for the speakers, as well as the templates and the procedures for answering questions – which were newly developed for this type of conference – also proved to be valuable. It was decided in advance that the twelve presentations – including those of the three invited speakers – would not be shared worldwide after the conference. Because results of the latest research (some of which is still unpublished) were presented at the conference only registered participants were able to view the speeches afterwards. They could access them on a private online channel for a week. In the first 24 hours, about 150 people made use of this opportunity. All open questions posted by participants were answered in writing after the conference.
Does ETH Zurich also host online conferences?
“In principle, yes. The infrastructure for an online conference of this size is available,” says David Ryffel of ETH Zurich’s Multimedia Services. “With the existing software, even asking questions via the Q&A function and conducting small surveys of the audience is possible. So far we have had some experience with smaller conferences and training courses. To extend this to worldwide conferences would be exciting”. By spring 2020, this opportunity will be publicised on the website. The existing infrastructure and IT knowledge at ETH Zurich will make possible as significantly reduced workload for teams organising online conferences in the future, and will help everyone – both organisers and participants – to reduce their flight emissions.