5 Tips for Getting the Most Out of Virtual Conferences
I recently attended a virtual conference in accounting and finance research. Through this experience I developed some tips and I have shared a few on social media. I thought it was probably a good idea to make a record here on my Blog and then share the tips more widely. This is with the aim to start a conversation about virtual conferences. Feel free to add your own tips in the comments or continue the discussion with via social media channels including Twitter or LinkedIn. Here is the original Twitter thread where I shared some tips.
Read on for my top 5 tips for virtual conferences.
Tip No. 1
Arrange a social media group chat space for a usual group of academics you would sit with during a regular conference. This way you can have an active discussion with a group of academics that would usually want to talk with and discuss papers with at conference. This keeps you engaged with the conference. You are less likely to drift away and do more enticing real-world activities. For example, for a recent conference I was part of a Facebook Group Chat and it really helped our conference experience because we could talk about the papers and discuss ideas. It helps to keep you motivated throughout the conference and catch-up with those academics you'd normally talk to at real conferences. The idea is you can discuss ideas & comment on papers just like if you were sitting together chatting. Other suggested chat platforms of chat could be: WhatsApp group, Viber or WeChat.
Tip No. 2
Download the full Conference Program in advance of the conference and have it open in PDF form on your computer. The reason for this is because some of the conference platforms are not as user friendly to navigate compared to looking at the conference Program. It will make your life easier because you can be checking on the PDF for paper you would like to see and then jump back to the web browser with the virtual conference open to scroll to the session you want to attend. Some virtual conference websites are difficult to see all the details about a paper at a glance for example all of the co-author names may not be shown. Having the PDF program is also useful because you can do highlighting of the sessions you would like to attend. Having the program PDF open also enables you to do a quick channel surfing among streams in the event no-shows due to last minute withdrawals.
Tip No. 3
Work out a meal plan matched to the conference program. You are now self-catering! A virtual conference I attended recently had talks during lunch as well as the parallel paper sessions. This often left only 10 mins for me to work out whether I should prepare or obtain lunch and what it should be. Be sure to check the conference program to locate where there are gaps to find food or cook a meal. Otherwise you end up having to skip a session to get your lunch sorted.
Tip No. 4
It's good to connect with fellow academies that you would normally catch up with during the conference. My experience of using one virtual conference platform was that it was good for saying "hello" to someone by message but that was about it. It was much easier to communicate via social media chat, email, phone or a side Zoom Video chat. My tip is to reach out to the academics you usual talk to via the platform, this way you can tell if they are in the audience too and then schedule with them a side Zoom meetings or phone call. I found this was useful because at conferences I would usually chat with co-authors about the status of existing projects or new project ideas. Sometimes I would save something to discuss, with a virtual conference you need to make the initiative to talk to the other people otherwise you aren't going to have the talks you were meaning to do at the conference.
Tip No. 5
Put in your calendar the virtual conference sessions you want to attend. This way if anyone tries to schedule a meeting with you it will be a reminder that you are at the virtual conference. Also you will be less likely to get yourself double-booked because you forgot about the conference. I found having the virtual conference in my email calendar was handy for both these reasons. For future conference I'd also follow another good idea of which I noticed a few of my academic friends doing of setting up their "auto-reply-out-of-office" email setting for the virtual conference. Normally for a face to face conference I would definitely have an out-of-office auto-reply. If only I had turned this one because I would have perhaps staved off some of the time used up during the virtual conference managing my email inbox.
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I hope you found these tips useful! Feel free to share this page with other people if you find it useful. I'm happy to continue the conversation on Twitter or LinkedIn about virtual conference and hear about your experience!
Regards,
Victoria
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