Wonders of E-Conferences

Abstract: 

Online conferences are fast becoming the norm: But how do you run one successfully? 

In June, the International Statistical Ecology Conference (vISEC2020), originally planned as a physical conference, was adapted to an online format which facilitated a high level of participant engagement.

Next was the 20th Biennial Computational Techniques and Applications Conference (CTAC2020) in August/September, which overcame the challenges of scheduling a program of over 80 talks with speakers in several different time zones. 

We will hear from two of the organisers of these successful events, who will share their experiences of running a packed conference program fully online. What worked and what didn't? Join us to find out! 

Professor David Warton:

"Virtual conferences have become a bit of a thing over the last few months, and we’ll briefly run through some lessons learnt from hosting the virtual International Statistical Ecology Conference in June, with over 900 participants. 

The conference program included everything originally planned for the physical conference - well minus the beer tasting - and was very successful, with 99% of attendees saying they would come again. 

To give you a quick sense for what we did and how to sign up to a mock virtual conference venue on Slack (at the below link) and have a look around!"

https://join.slack.com/t/unsw-uqu3870/shared_invite/zt-h39b0dpj-BkIFygCh8mARxDcXMDK3AA

Dr Vera Roshchina:

Drawing on my recent experience organising online conferences, seminar series and a student reading group, I would like to focus on the following topics:

Technical solutions for holding online meetings;

Challenges specific to online events and ways of resolving them.

I am hoping for a discussion on these topics, so we can all exchange our ideas and solutions. Please use the slack workspace set up by David to post your thoughts about organising online meetings (not only conferences).