May 26th, 2020

Why Every Virtual Scientific Conference Needs a Repository

Sol Rosenberg3 minutes read
photpo Why Every Virtual Scientific Conference Needs a Repository

Once you have decided to hold a virtual conference for the scientific community, you are beset with a million details to organize and an overwhelming number of questions.

How do we design our event? How much of the event will be live? How much will be virtual? How do we preserve the potential for interactivity?

In a physical conference, your audience is usually pretty captive, e.g., at the venue or in the room. However, with a virtual conference your audience can easily "change the channel" and click over to something else in a heartbeat. How do you maintain their attention?

All great questions.

At Underline, we produce TV-quality events that strive to delight the attendees. We understand how important it is to engage conference attendees on a variety of levels so the audience remains glued to the screen.

I want to share with you what I believe is the secret to every successful virtual scientific conference...

The One Thing Every Virtual Conference Must Have

Here is the one thing most people forget when planning a virtual conference. Actually, it is just as important for an in-person physical conference, but for a virtual scientific conference it is beyond crucial, and that is the answer to this question:

What happens after the conference? Where do these videos live after your event is over?

There must be some sort of REPOSITORY – some place where attendees can come and revisit the videos. There must be a place for people to view these videos in a time-shifted manner, such as if they have a schedule conflict or are in a different time-zone.

You also want to have something more relevant, useful and delightful than a bunch of files on a shared server.

Just as the actual event must delight the attendee, so too the repository must provide significant added value to the viewer. This is just as important whether they are experiencing the conference a month or a year later.

Why is the Repository So Crucial?

A well-executed repository is mandatory for a virtual event (and for an in-person event as well). It is imperative that we preserve the record of what transpired.

For scientific conferences with presented research, you certainly want to ensure that the discourse and scholarship does not end after your three or four days. While there are printed proceedings, what happened at the conference usually disappears without a repository.

Also, when designing a virtual event, you have many more choices as to how to design your conference.

After all, just trying to mimic an in-person conference is like taking a picture of a magazine and calling it a digital publication. That’s not the experience you want.

New Levers, New Controls, More Flexibility

The decision matrix and flexibility with a virtual conference is much different than a physical one. Let us compare some differences for you to consider:

As you can see from the above, designing a well-executed virtual conference with professional TV production values is not simple but quite do-able.

In my view, the most important aspect is a well-done repository. After all, now that we can watch YouTube and Netflix on our phones, why not attend the conference from the same mobile device?

Some open questions include:

How do we maintain the flexibility of on-demand with the interactivity of "live"?

How do we continue the conversation after the conference is over?

How do we make the videos as discoverable and valuable as primary research?

Continuing the Conversation

The other important point of a well-designed repository is the ability to continue the conversation after the event.

Sure, you can have someone view the lecture. But can they continue the Q&A? If they discover this lecture a day/month/year later, can they still be part of the presentation?

In our view, this is absolutely essential. The ability to time-shift is one of the main levers we can use to enable technology to our advantage.

These are all important questions, and at Underline, we have spent the last two years refining the answers to these issues.

Please feel free to reach out to discuss your next event – whether in person, virtual, or a hybrid.

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Sol Rosenberg— May 26th, 2020
Read more aboutConference News

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