There is no replacement for face-to-face contact to understand people and the field, and it is that important that it trumps all the good points. Even Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress and CEO of Automattic with a 100% 1,200 people workforce working as a distributed entity, expects his teams to meet face-to-face for a total of 4 weeks a year. And acknowledges in a 100% distributed world in-person meetings are even more important.

Today (21st April 2020) saw the conclusion of my first fully distributed academic conference. The W4A is home and required destination for all Web Accessibility (and accessibility in general) researchers, it co-locates every year with the much larger Web Conference, and moves around the world on a rotation of Europe, the Americas, and Asia; this year located in Taipei.

I think there are many things in favour of the distributed conference, and some key things that aren’t, those key things will ensure that a physically co-located meeting will continue to persist well into the future. But first the good things.

The Good Things

You get to attend a conference, and because it isn’t physical then there is no plane travel, no hotel stays, and no high price tag (as there is no food and beverage, no physical space required etc). You get there on time, there is no awkwardness if you don’t know anyone, the presentations are often pre-recorded and orderly, and there seems to be more Q&A (from my experience) as people feel freer to type their questions and comments and do not have to comment verbally. Once you finish for the day you are at home, and there is no travel back, and so no jet lag. All in all, I think it worked very well with good organisation and planning and is a good way to participate. I firmly believe that in the new normal we should provide distributed access points to anyone who wishes to participate in this way.

The Bad

Now the bad, and the only bad thing is the lack of personal, social, community contact - there is no replacement for face-to-face contact to understand people and the field, and it is that important that it trumps all the good points. Even Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress and CEO of Automattic with a 100% 1,200 people workforce working as a distributed entity, expects his teams to meet face-to-face for a total of 4 weeks a year. And acknowledges in a 100% distributed world in-person meetings are even more important.

Important: One recent positive aspect of conferences moving to online is that I have just signed up for three conferences I would never have attended - GitHub, JAMStack, and wonk.he Buildings.

I can see myself participating as a distributed attendee at conferences that are very far away, interesting but off my critical path, or at a very expensive conference which I don’t like but may have some good presentations (such as CHI). Indeed, I wasn’t going to Hypertext this year - but if there is a distributed option and a reduced price I very well may do.

10 Pointers for Success

Now I’ve had the experience what would I do and what would I expect:

  1. Adjust to Conference Time Zone - If it is in a different time zone, then alter your local time to coincide. The W4A was UK local -7 hours and so started at 02:00 am each day. The first day just felt tiring as you would in any time zone change and the other days just then felt normal.

  2. Expect Jet Lag - You should expect to feel ‘Jet-lagged’ even though you haven’t moved anywhere - but getting back on track afterwards is much easier.

  3. Set Your Clocks - Make sure you have a clock on your devices which is set to ‘conference time’ and refer to times in conference time.

  4. Full Participation - Expect to participate in all the sessions and don’t just cherry-pick - you should stay for everything.

  5. Treat Yourself - Buy in some treats for your conference-at-home breakfasts and lunches.

  6. Virtual Socialising - The W4A didn’t have a distributed drinks/social event but some do - and sending a chat message to a leader in the field (say) is much less intimidating then sauntering up to them.

  7. Prepare Your Presentation - If you are speaking - then prepare it and record it in advance and make sure you include a view of yourself giving it as well as the slides. The video of you presenting adds a lot of energy and implicit meaning and understanding from your body language that you don’t get from dry-slides. Also at a minimum use Google slides closed captioning, but if you can, build a corrected version using systems like sonix.ai which allows you to build a searchable transcript and a subtitle file.

  8. My Production Pipeline - My pipeline was OBS software to record, OpenShot to edit out the stumbles, sonix.ai for the transcript and podcast versions, and Handbrake to bind the subtitles to the video and convert to mp4. The whole pipeline took 30 minutes to learn and a 15-minute presentation was done-and-dusted in 60 minutes.

  9. Caring Responsibilities - But I’ve kids or caring responsibilities? So you’d have these anyway - you don’t have to travel to and from the conference for a day at each end, and if your kids are at school you can still attend most of the conference. Just ask for your preferred presentation slots in advance. You could also get a babysitter for way cheaper than a flight for 2 days (and the conference may help with this), and kids running on and off camera and high jinks in the background have also become normal - the definition of what it is to be ‘professional’ has changed (and about time too).

  10. It’s Different, Not Worse - Realise that it is OK for it to be different from an in-person conference - it isn’t a replica - it’s got its own energy and tempo.

Bonus Advice

And your bonus advice: I’d go to my first conference in a series as a distributed participant, I’d stay there for all the talks - I’d fully participate in chat - and I’d ask people interesting questions and follow up afterwards. The next year when you are there in person you will have a number of people who remember you (for good reasons I hope) and those you now have an online relationship with and so will have a supportive framework when you are there in-person and will enable you to make the most of the in-person event.

For Organisers

There is, of course, one critical thing to note for the organisers: You can allow every single person from low to middle-income countries to participate as a distributed-attendee for free and to present their work, for free. We get to increase the plurality of voices, and this can only be good for scientific progress.

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