As organizers of a research conference, we were faced with a difficult decision: do we cancel our three-day June event, or take it online?
We had planned to offer some virtual forms of participation for the biennial meeting of the Group of Research on Organization and the Natural Environment (GRONEN), which would have brought together about 100 management scholars researching business sustainability.
In keeping with this year's discussion theme, 'Sustainability in the Digital Age', we set out to livestream some sessions from the Católica Lisbon School of Business and Economics.
Together with researchers from the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, who approached us with the idea of running a pilot study on the acceptability of virtual-reality (VR) conferencing, we also created a 3D world for participants to participate in. can be tried. Such a conference, by using a VR headset.
But being completely online presents a fundamental challenge: Can you deliver a 'real' conference experience, one that makes you feel like part of a research community and instills a sense of cohesion?
In our experience, giving a ten-minute presentation and getting two or three questions from an exhausted audience who has spent the day in a packed conference room doesn't guarantee hundreds of dollars on flights and days away from our desks and projects. . . We still go, though, because of the value of the social part of a convention.
We decided to run GRONEN2020 virtually and paid special attention to the social aspects. Although we feel that virtual events cannot replace face-to-face meetings with co-authors and colleagues, this is how we tried to create an attractive virtual alternative.
Set up a conference forum
Instead of limiting our schedule to a list of Zoom sessions, we have set up a hub for people to meet and mingle. We couldn't find a conference-hosting platform with the functionalities we wanted, so we created our own: ichair.org.
Attendees can enter a virtual plaza where they are greeted by a chat bot, and find an event hub with an overview of the event. They can see which sessions are currently live and who is online. They can post to a message board, replay sessions and share presentations, literature recommendations, and other content in a central repository.
Mix-and-match participant
Since many people find it difficult to network at physical events, we set out to find formats that help initiate interactions in virtual space. Our platform offers a roulette that randomly connects people to chat with each other.
It matches people based on key words entered in their online profiles to discuss an existing project they are working on; We send these people a message to suggest they book one of the virtual rooms, or open a quick chat to talk privately.
Smart ways to facilitate online conversations can help reduce some of the social awkwardness that can come up when you first initiate contact. For a young PhD student, joining a discussion may be no less intimidating than going to a group of senior scholars.
Don't forget the fun factor
We asked ourselves what we thought about conventions. Informal interactions at receptions and attending social events and parties resulted in high scores, so we have set up a virtual bar where people can share anecdotes about academic life, such as their first conference.
We've created a virtual sightseeing tour through Lisbon and short pop-up quizzes for break time, and a colleague of ours will host the office yoga lounge. People have short online attention spans, so we think it's important to make not only sessions but break times as playful and refreshing as possible.
When hit, we thought optimistically, "We'll take our convention virtual." In the process, we've found that instead of thinking of online conferences as a replacement-by-need replacement for physical conventions that should be similar to the 'real thing', we need to treat them as an entirely different model of academic exchange Try to accept it.
Maybe conference year 2020 will help spur the transition beyond the pandemic, to more – and more fun – virtual meetings in addition to physical meetings. After all, who would want to talk to colleagues and friends more often?
