Background

We are seeing a flood of event cancellations in response to the global threat of COVID-19. This has triggered renewed interest in organising virtual conferences and generally moving face-to-face events into the virtual space. These discussions are not new. The environmental impact of the many thousands of events taking place around the world has had people question whether they should try to run more events online. But neither this nor the significant cost of attending these events has led to a significant reduction of conference travel.

This guide was inspired by a discussion on the ALT mailing list. I compiled and annotated all the platforms mentioned and reviewed experiences people including myself have shared from organising online events. But ultimately, I tried to approach this guide from first principles, using the concept of affordances to analyze more deeply what are the things that happen at events that go beyond to what happens in sessions or exhibition stands.

This post proceeds in the reverse order from the title, starting with challenges and finishing with a review of available platforms. It is possible to read each of the three parts independently. Here's a quick summary of each part.

Part 1: Challenges: Why are not more events taking place online?

In this part, I look at much more detail than is typical in this context at what makes in-person events different from online events and why that makes online events much less common than might be expected. I propose that it is because there are many more things happening in a physical space than is apparent and virtual event organisers or attendees often don't take them into account. I compare the physical and virtual affordances and show the gaps in our mental models of both.

I also look at this issue from the perspective of the institution from which the conference attendee received funding/permission to attend.

Part 2: Strategies: What can we learn from successful online events

In this part, I compile a list of tips and suggestions for event organizers based both on reports of people who have run successful events. I try to link these to the challenges outlined in part 1 and add more tips to address the affordance gap.

I also offers suggestions to virtual event participants and more importantly to institutions who wish for their members to attend virtual events. My perspective is that virtual events can only succeed if the entire ecosystem is aligned around them.

Part 3: Platforms: What technologies are available

In the final part, I review the decisions event organizers have to make when choosing a technical platform. I then give examples of different types of platforms and offer brief review of both general purpose video conferencing platforms (such as Zoom) and some special-purpose online event platforms.

Challenges: Why are not more events taking place online?

I organised my first video lecture in 2002 when I was teaching in Glasgow and wanted students to get access to experts from London and Prague. It required a dedicated room and a technician on both ends, yet it seemed that an explosion of online teaching was just around the corner. But when I started a public lecture webinar series in 2010, online presentations were still a rarity. Now, webinars and virtual meetings are commonplace but we're still not seeing a lot of entire events moving online. Even during the time of global lockdown and mass event cancelations, most events are simply cancelled even as teaching, meetings and music concerts move online. Why is that?

The common answer to the question of why we're not running more online conferences goes along the lines of 'people are social animals' they need all the cues of face to face conversation, gestures, facial expression, etc. to communicate with each other. But I don't think this is the case when it comes to transmitting information. Sitting in a lecture room and listening to someone does not give me any better cues than watching them on a video.