I wanted to write this post for many years, but in zoom-era of scientific communication in covid-19 crisis, the level of awareness of alternatives to on-site conference communication and about their limitations is higher and I can not postpone any more. To say few words about my background: I have long surpassed a hundred conference attendances in my scientific career (mainly in physics and math) and I have had key role in organizing 2 conferences and one summer school and contributed as a committee member for another 3. I should also say in advance that weighing conference impact has quite many aspects, from mere cost in resources and participant’s and organizer’s time, travel pleasure, but also environmental carbon and other footprint and physical exhausture (say, developing problems with spine due long travel), false facade making, meeting and failing to meet, dissemination but also propaganda aspect, social support but also bullying, boosting researchers security but also their insecurity and so on, formal participations just to fulfill grant requirements and so on and some conferences for excuse of tourism; some aspects are shared with other sorts of intensive communication, some are specific. There is also a paradox of a number of available conferences in some field: if there are more conferences the probability that a specific top expert will be present at a given conference is smaller, hence in a world with too many conferences it is more likely that it will be harder to meet many critically interesting experts at a single conference. We should discuss how to make the conferences more cumulatively effective, for example posting background information in advance, recording and posting conference videos a posteriori, and supplementary materials at any time. Finally, there are amplifying benefits in combining on-site conferencing with online participation of some participants, which should be explored in planned and thoughtful way (it was happening sporadically and ad hoc so far).
Of course, we should not haste with conclusions based on temporary experience with recent mandate of mainly online communication, for some dominantly frustrating and for some even liberating. First of all, passage to online communication has to have well elaborated devices to replace (rather than to complement) real meetings. Thus some distinguish in teaching true online coursework from half-fulfilling emergency online teaching, see. e.g. https://er.educause.edu/articles/2020/3/the-difference-between-emergency-remote-teaching-and-online-learning
(UNDER CONSTRUCTION)
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