Some time ago, I wrote a blog post on the carbon cost of conferences:
https://vasishth-statistics.blogspot.com/2019/10/estimating-carbon-cost-of.html
The background for this post was that at the time I was in the process of organizing the AMLaP 2020 conference, and was beginning to wonder whether these international conferences are even sustainable given the climate crisis unfolding. In discussions with others, one question someone raised was: what is the actual carbon cost of conferences? This made me curious to find out what the rough carbon cost would be, hence the above-linked post. At the time, it didn't even occur to me that a viable alternative could be a completely online conference.
But then corona happened, and Brian Dillon moved CUNY completely online. I didn't attend that conference because I was going through a medical crisis at the time. But around that time I realized that I would have to move AMLaP online as well. By then my medical situation was going from bad to worse, so I handed over control to Titus von der Malsburg. Titus masterfully navigated all the obstacles to get AMLaP up and running, helped by a large team consisting of my lab members and several other department members. I was pretty amazed to see how superbly organized and well-coordinated this team was.
Having attended this and a satellite conference, SAFAL, online, I have to admit that an online conference just doesn't have the same look and feel of a real conference. It's just something different to sit down with colleagues from all over the world and chat with them over a beer. An online conversation over zoom just doesn't cut it. However, if we want to take the carbon cost issue seriously, I feel that online conferences are here to stay. At the very least, it should be possible in the future to allow for hybrid conferences; people should be able to participate (and I mean, ask questions after talks and meet people) from a remote place. I got several emails and other types of messages from people telling me they could only participate because AMLaP was online; some were pregnant and unable to travel, some (like me) had too serious a medical condition to allow them to travel, and some just don't have the money to go to a conference. Interestingly, Indian psycholinguists from India were well-represented at AMLaP, I think for the first time (I didn't have any direct hand in making this happen, the Indians are an emerging group of highly competent and sophisticated psycholinguists). So I think the online format makes the conference more inclusive as well.
One further thing many people noticed is that younger people were asking more questions after talks than in physical conferences. In physical psycholinguistic conferences, sometimes senior people dominate in the discussions. This isn't even possible to do in an online conference because the moderators have total control over which question is asked and by whom. But it seemed like it was mostly younger people who felt comfortable asking questions online; I saw very few questions from senior people. This is good news, because the younger people should be out there engaging with the field.
This year, we we used gather.town to socialize. Take a look at it. Initially I was skeptical this would allow for much socializing, but it worked surprisingly well. I noticed that some of the young people were hesitating to approach older ones, so I boldly went up to them and talked with them. It worked well; I met several young MSc and early PhD students. I also met up with colleagues I haven't seen for over a decade I think (Tessa Warren for example). It was nothing like face-to-face meetings but it was still fun and better than nothing. Pro tip: you can make your avatar on gather.town dance by pressing the z button. Cool. Brian Dillon, Dustin Chacon, and I had a brief dance party (no music though). You get little hearts getting bigger and bigger over your avatar's head if you dance. Neat.
So overall, despite the huge disadvantage that one can't meet people in person, there is enough gain from running conferences online that all future conferences should have at least a live streaming component. The talks should be on twitch or some other platform, and they should be recorded and stored online for everyone to view. This will create a more inclusive environment and can only be good for the field. As a side effect, it is also positive thing we can do towards reducing the effects of the climate crisis. Every little bit counts.
You can watch the conference recording on twitch. A more permanent recording will appear on the amlap2020.org home page eventually.
