On Tuesday, 17 March 2020 at 01:48:40 UTC, John Carter wrote:
Motivating Questions:
What is the difference between an "Online Conference" and
watching something on youtube?
A month after the online conference, the difference (between it
and a Youtube channel) is that you have a fixed playlist of
videos to browse through, and their content contains some
sense of community - there are questions in the video (vs.
response videos), there's chat and people milling around at the
time of the video (although livestreams get this), and there's
a measure of professionalness: people show up with their real
names and aren't viciously rude or vulgar.
So after some time, the difference is all in the content of the
videos, and not in the experience of watching the videos.
The big differences then must be in the experience: in
attending a conference vs. submitting a video and seeing it
posted later.
If the answer is nothing, don't bother with a conference, just
create a youtube channel.
If the answer is a conference is nothing like watching stuff on
youtube... you better consciously and actively organise it to
be different.
What is the difference between "Online" and "Meat space"?
1. You can directly see other people and watch them react to
events in real time, and they you.
You lose this quality very quickly with online solutions, but
some can still give you a clearer sense of your audience.
2. When the presenter is speaking, others are silent. The
presenter has probably practiced a bit and isn't expecting to
improve the speech later with a video editor.
Some people could benefit from seeing a stream of people
chatting about their talk, while they make it, but I imagine a
lot of people are going to find any such thing distracting or a
detriment - not "the audience talking amongst itself" but "the
people in the audience wanting me to respond to them".
3. There are visual aids and, alternately, the person of the
presenter who are visual focuses.
You have body language, you have physical gestures for
emphasis, which rely on seeing who's talking, and you also have
a slideshow or terminal interaction.
You lose the first quality very quickly in online solutions, but
with cameras and "presenting modes" the person giving the talk
can still consciously switch the visual focus.
If the answer is "Nothing", you will have a guy, selected by a
papers committee, standing in front of an empty hall talking at
the camera.
...
Some things cost a huge amount and decrease the value of the
conference. (Very tight limits on number of tracks / papers,
attendees, health and safety, transport, accommodation,
flights, .)
All of this also serves as an up-front quality check, which is
at least much easier than moderating for quality after the
fact.
A very bad speech can be hard to sit through at the time, but
it's also bad a month later, as it reduces the average quality
of the conference playlist. You can't just say "here, check out
this link for some good D videos"; you have to make specific
recommendations or disrecommendations.
--
For technology, if you go to https://dlang.org/ and click on
Community, there's a "Community Discord". I'd suggest a
pre-conference period where people can get used to that (and
some people used to making videos out of voice chats on it),
and then just using that for the conference. And I say this
while not being a fan of Discord itself.
