Air travel to conferences is an important source of emissions by academics. In order to reduce these emissions, a number of conference organizers have adopted various strategies.
Decentralized conferences[edit | edit source]
Conference with several virtually connected regional hubs, rather than a single location.
- Double conference "Higher algebra and mathematical physics" (HAMP 2018), with two locations in Bonn and Waterloo.
- ICMPC15-ESCOM10, a 2018 conference on music psychology, with four locations in Graz, La Plata, Sydney and Montreal.
- Ecology & Religion in Nineteenth-Century Studies Conference, a 2019 conference at 5 digitally connected sites in the USA and in the UK. The conference website points to a number of assessments of its approach to flightless conferencing, including this blog post.[1]
Partly virtual conferences[edit | edit source]
- The 2019 meeting of the European Biological Rhythms Society (EBRS), to which four fifth of the attendees connected via virtual hubs, and where psychologists studied the effectiveness of networking.[2]
- The 2020 meeting of Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies, whose virtual part was increased due to the coronavirus pandemic.[3]
Virtual conferences[edit | edit source]
- The world in 2050: creating/imagining just climate futures (2016) and A clockwork green: ecomedia and the anthropocene (2018), two virtual conferences which came with a white paper on their organization.[4]
- A 2017 virtual conference on agile practices in government used not only Zoom videoconferencing, but also Slack and Twitter.[5]
- Couchcon, a 2018 marketing conference organized by Wistia.[6]
- Where next for global taxing rights?, a 2019 conference.[7]
- Photonics Online Meetup 2020, an all-online one-day conference, including a virtual poster session on Twitter.
[edit | edit source]
The 2019-2020 coronavirus pandemic forced many conferences to adopt a virtual format. It is speculated that virtual meetings may remain common after the pandemic due to their lower cost, lower environmental impact, and higher convenience for many participants.[8]
Some conferences that switched to a virtual format due to the pandemic:
- ICLR2020, the Eighth International Conference on Learning Representations.
- The April 2020 meeting of the American Physical Society. "The society hired a company to provide the necessary online infrastructure and technological support."[9][4]
- Neutrino 2020, an online conference with a virtual reality platform.
References[edit | edit source]
- ↑ "Multiplying Connections, Cutting Carbon: An experiment in multi-site, digitally linked, flightless conferencing (Joshua King)". Conference Inference. 2019-12-17. Retrieved 2020-03-26.
- ↑ Abbott, Alison (2019-12-20). "Low-carbon, virtual science conference tries to recreate social buzz". Nature (Springer Science and Business Media LLC) 577 (7788): 13–13. doi:10.1038/d41586-019-03899-1. ISSN 0028-0836.
- ↑ "How to shift your conference online in light of the coronavirus (opinion)". insidehighered.com. 2020-03-16. Retrieved 2020-03-16.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 "A nearly carbon-neutral conference model". Ken Hiltner. Retrieved 2020-03-27.
- ↑ "Lessons learned from hosting a virtual conference". Medium. 2017-07-17. Retrieved 2020-03-16.
- ↑ "Why and How We Hosted CouchCon, Our Virtual Conference". Wistia. 2018-08-20. Retrieved 2020-03-16.
- ↑ "Lessons learned from organising our first virtual conference". Tax Justice Network. 2020-03-05. Retrieved 2020-03-16.
- ↑ Viglione, Giuliana (2020-06-02). "How scientific conferences will survive the coronavirus shock". Nature. doi:10.1038/d41586-020-01521-3. ISSN 0028-0836.
- ↑ Castelvecchi, Davide (2020-04-24). "'Loving the minimal FOMO': First major physics conference to go virtual sees record attendance". Nature (Springer Science and Business Media LLC). doi:10.1038/d41586-020-01239-2. ISSN 0028-0836.
External links[edit | edit source]
- Eco-friendly conferences at Sustainatility in Science wiki.
- Comparison of web conferencing software, including the free software BigBlueButton, Jitsi Meet and OpenMeetings.