Online Conferences and Covid-19

Yeah. Right. We’ve been sitting around the fire with our housemates for what is it? Seven months now? That’s about long enough with our friends shut out, wouldn’t you say?

People bridle at the enforced privacy of pandemic lockdowns and social distancing. For me, the isolation is not so bad. I know the ropes of working from home and I’m an introvert.

I like and enjoy other people, but person to person encounters drain the life out of me. I know many of my friends are energized by getting together and breathing the same air with others, but it rarely works that way for me.

Pre-pandemic, I joined with a good friend or two for lunch regularly. Oh, I enjoyed those lunches, but when they were over, I exhaled a sigh of relief and took a nap to recover the energy I had lost. I used to think this personal quirk was a disadvantage, but now, I realize it is a boon not to be troubled by all this isolation. I’ve noticed that there are other folks like me, but in a group of ten, maybe only two of us.

The Washington Library Association online conference

This week, I’ve been participating in an online library conference. I’ve read that the online event business is booming. I can understand why. Online conferences are cheap and they work remarkably well; I prefer online conferences to the in-person species.

For attendees, traveling to and from these gatherings is expensive. Airfare, hotels, and meals cost, and time away from regular work costs more. On the event business side, conference hotels and centers are orders of magnitude more costly than electronic platforms. Speakers charge less to present electronically because presenting from a home or office takes less time and effort than crossing the country to check into a venue that is not much of a perk for a speaker who endures one-size-fits-all hotel décor several times a month.

As I understand it, the firms that stage these events have reduced their fees and made them back and more because the number of attendees has increased. This year, the Whatcom County Library System was able to purchase blanket admission to the Washington Library Association online conference that lets the entire library staff, and trustees attend rather than individual registrations.

I’ve gone to the Washington Library Association conference every year since I became a library trustee, but I almost decided not to go this year. I enjoy and benefit from attending, but the hectic move from our Ferndale house back to Waschke Road disrupted just about everything on top of the pandemic. Making it worse, I’ve started some time-consuming projects. I’ve always worked during conferences on a laptop or tablet, but this year, I’ve been able to work from my office in between conference events. It’s been great.

I have some suggestions for attending online conferences.

Schedule your time carefully

Attending a conference in person is a scheduling challenge. It’s easy to miss a session that you really wanted to attend because you skipped a page in the agenda, or you were distracted by a conversation with a colleague. When you’re attending from home, scheduling is more difficult because the events in your life are not built around the conference schedule— for example, your lunchtime may clash with sessions you want to attend. You can always listen to the recording, but that’s never the same. Review the agenda and plan ahead as carefully as you would in person.

Don’t multi-task

Efficiency experts liken multi-tasking to a speedway multi-car pileup. You get less done and what you do is seldom done well.

The temptation to multi-task is strong, especially attending a conference in your home office where you are likely to have several screens up and running. My usual home setup is a primary screen for the project I’m working on, another for online lookups, and a third for communications. I don’t have any trouble concentrating on my project at hand. For me, having one browser open to an online dictionary and another to email and Slack is the reverse of distracting: a quick side glance to a secondary screen and I’m back to the main subject. But when I have to fiddle opening and switching windows and desktops, I am distracted and likely to get stuck on whatever I have to bring up.

All those screens while listening to a conference presentation is different. Even the best presentations have dead spots that tempt me to look aside and process the current crop of sub-urgent communications or check on the latest minor question that’s been bugging me. Don’t do it! Boredom is lack of engagement. The instant I disengage, loss of interest in the presentation begins to snowball and before I know it, I am researching which village in Cornwall was most likely to have been the location of King Arthur’s round table, or some equally pressing subject, instead of taking a once in a lifetime chance to raise a question about tracking outcomes of library strategic initiatives. Yikes!

Take notes

I’m terrible at taking notes at conferences. While I am participating, new ideas and concepts pop into my head with crystal clarity that I couldn’t possibly forget. No need to write anything this exciting down.

Sure. I’m seventy-one years old. If I’m distracted, the content of my head disappears with the cheerful readiness of a Steller’s Jay stealing peanuts. The arrival of the next idea clears my head of everything but lingering enthusiasm for whatever’s not there anymore. Come to think of it, the same thing happened 50 years ago when I was an undergraduate attending lectures.

Take notes, grasshopper.

Use chat

In the software development groups I used to lead, chat apps, like Slack, often were the key to productivity and communication. Most conferences have provisions for chatting among session attendees and community discussions. If you participate, chat takes the place of the conversations that go on in the hallways and over meals and drinks. Not perfect for establishing friendships, but chat discussions are often thoughtful, cogent, and well worth your time.

Remember, “On the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog.” In a chat session, you’re as smart as what you say. Take time to think, be courteous, but don’t be shy.

Setup

Have your professional appearance, background, camera, microphone, and lighting set up before the conference begins. Not all sessions allow you to interact with the speakers, but when they do, be prepared as a courtesy to your fellow participants.

Your setup is like a pandemic mask. You wear it for others, not yourself. You won’t get any personal benefit from clear sound and a flattering Zoom image. Your questions will still be answered if you look like a bear in a cave and sound like a mouth full of crushed granite. And the chances that your boss will notice your setup are slim. Sorry, but this is true. However, think about your fellow participants. They want to be part of a professional and dignified group, not a pack of ill-fed scavengers. Give them a break. And a good appearance will make you feel better too.

I’m impatient with the pandemic. Like most people, I wish it were just over, but I’m a historian as well as an engineer. Plagues don’t disappear in a blink of the eye. They fade away with effects lingering for decades, even centuries. The plague in 14th century Europe is sometimes said to have lead to the Renaissance. We don’t know what the long term effect of covid-19 will be, but our best hope is to adapt to the snow storm, not fail at ignoring it.