Post #2862348

2025-07-14 06:38 UTC

@johentsch@hostux.social @yaxu@post.lurk.org The main difficulty I had when I organized a fully remote conference was that people's time wasn't respected. Like "oh, it's remote? Then you can skip the talks for an hour and attend this meeting I deem more important." We tried to encourage people to be from home, but that's not workable for everyone. City-based watch parties worked well for people who could have a good group audio set-up - and that solves your problem too.

Replies (2)

@yaxu@post.lurk.org 2025-07-15 14:29

@juliette@mastodon.green @johentsch@hostux.social Being able to skip talks to attend more important meetings can also be seen as a big advantage.. I guess it's up to the event to programme engaging/important talks, and not overload the programme too much (although that is difficult when there are a lot of nice proposals..), so people are able to attend to more of the programme. In a given in-person conference day, I can only really give myself fully to a coupe of talks anyway. Agreed good audio is really crucial.

Open ##2862349
@valhalla@social.gl-como.it 2025-07-15 15:32

@juliette@mastodon.green @johentsch@hostux.social @yaxu@post.lurk.org I'm somebody for whom going to a conference (in my case tech rather than academic) is a significant effort, so I only go to the ones that I *really* care about *a lot* and remote the rest. I have to say that the volunteer-run tech conferences I tend to interact with have been quite good at allowing remote participation from way before 2020, and for watching talks that's often as good or even *better* than being in person. Interacting with talks is also a solved problem that only sometimes fails because of a lack of volunteers. The big problem is the hallway track. as tech people there are multiple ways that we already communicate online, and they are great (and sometimes used even during conferences), but they just aren't the same thing as in-person, often random, meeting, and none of the solution I've seen trying during these years have come even close.

Open ##2862350