I love going to AFM conferences: the quiet buzz of activity as we set up our stand; the opportunity to sit in on talks to hear more about the latest research and developments with AFM; the unexpected conversations that lead to fresh thinking, novel ideas and the seeding of new partnerships.

Yet again this year however, most of the key AFM conferences will be taking place online.

Behind the scenes

As a member of the RMS AFM & SPM committee I am in the fortunate position of having some insight into the conversations that are happening behind the scenes for conference organisers.

There are a number of challenges when it comes to recreating the conference experience in the virtual world. There are issues of format – around running parallel sessions (or not), identifying which platform to run the conference on and what sort of functionality is needed (how will the audience be able to interact with the speaker, for example).

New challenges

Online conferencing offers a number of opportunities that on the surface seem obvious ones to capitalise on, such as the ability to record sessions. Recording is straightforward on all platforms and would be popular with attendees but equally it throws up new considerations around confidentially, plagiarism and copyright. These aren’t problems we tend to face in live conferences as recording simply doesn’t happen and cameras are generally discouraged.

How best to run poster sessions is a great example of a format based challenge. How do you present a poster virtually? At a traditional conference you would be able to view the posters and chat in person with their creators who would be standing close by. Virtually that’s more difficult. One way to tackle this is to have a short soundbite accompanying each poster or alternatively to make breakout rooms available to facilitate attendees talking with the poster presenters.

Online networking?

One of the biggest and most obvious questions is how do you replace the networking that happens in live conferences? There’s no virtual equivalent to going to the bar and therefore no late night discussions, when everyone is relaxed and the creative juices are free flowing. The spontaneity of meeting and falling into unexpected conversation is one challenge virtual conferencing has yet to successfully address.

In a similar vein, it’s much harder to secure sponsorship for online conferences – companies don’t tend to feel they get good value out of these virtual meetings. Best practice has yet to be identified in how to give companies the level of exposure they seek, without breaking the flow of the sessions.

There are of course a number of advantages in conferences moving online.

Greater accessibility

There’s the opportunity for people to attend and even present who might otherwise not be able to – those with responsibilities at home, such as parents and primary carers, people who can afford to attend sessions, but can’t afford to be away over night or for a series of consecutive nights.

Online conferencing takes out the time-consuming, expensive and environmentally damaging practice of travel. Again this has the potential to open conferences up to a wider spectrum of people, including for example students who may not have access to the often large travel budget required to attend in-person.

Equally online conferences don’t cost as much to run which in turn ensures registration fees are lower. Some conferences are even coming online as completely free events, another democratising advantage to holding virtual meetings.

Radical rethink

Finally, there’s the skills learned by conference organisers in having to radically rethink the very traditional and old school format of live conferences. Whenever we’re forced to innovate it’s inevitable that alongside the less successful attempts to make things as familiar and similar as possible to the original, some totally unexpected wins will emerge, opening up new and better ways of working.

I believe and hope the experiences of last year and this will feed into a new hybrid model, taking the best of the traditional approach and blending it with what we’ve learned we can do with the technology now available to us in the virtual space. It is my hope that we can hold onto many of those gains, especially around accessibility, as the world opens up in the coming years and we are once more able to travel again.

Which conferences will you be attending this year? What are your thoughts on the advantages vs disadvantages of conferences moving online? What’s your preference? We’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject – in the comments section or email me james@nunano.com

Below we have a round-up of the key AFM conferences – when they are happening and links to find out more about how to register and get involved. You can find more information and links to conference websites on our conferences page.

May/June