Journal of Cleaner Production 294 (2021) 126287 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Cleaner Production journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro The virtues of virtual conferences €l Foramitti a, b, *, Stefan Drews a, Franziska Klein a, The Joe o Konc a a Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain b Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t Article history: In this comment, we share our experiences from organizing the ICTA2020 Virtual Conference on Low- Received 29 June 2020 Carbon Lifestyles and argue that virtual events have potential to become the new norm among aca- Received in revised form demics. We present an overview of tools that can be used and support our arguments with results from a 20 January 2021 feedback survey that was filled out by the participants of our conference. Main challenges for virtual Accepted 3 February 2021 Available online 9 February 2021 conferences are the facilitation of informal spaces for social interaction and the prevention of ‘screen fatigue’. Advantages are that they can increase societal outreach, improve the academic quality of dis- Handling editor: Dr Sandra Caeiro cussions, create new opportunities for networking, and provide an inclusive environment. © 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). 1. Introduction confinement and other social distancing measures, but that they have potential to become the new norm among academics, i.e. the The COVID-19 pandemic has created opportunities to develop ‘new normal’ of international academic events. new practices. Before the outbreak, we had planned to organize ICTA2020 e a scientific conference on the drivers, impacts, and policies of low-carbon lifestyle changes e as a physical event in 2. Overall evaluation Barcelona. While we were aware that physical meetings have a large environmental impact (Le Que re et al., 2015; Holden et al., To begin with the overall picture: According to 99% of the survey 2017; Sanz-Cobena et al., 2020), we could not imagine a virtual respondents, the event was a success (slightly to very positive), format to be successful. We were following what was normal. with 50% among them rating it as very positive and more than 84% Forced to cancel our plans due to the pandemic, we decided to claiming to have a more positive opinion about virtual conferences change the format towards a virtual conference. We wanted to now. recreate the experience of physical conferences with their stimu- An important condition for this positive outcome was arguably lating talks and workshops, discussions over cups of coffee, and the prior communication between organizers and participants. opportunities to meet new people. Our experience showed us that Upon realizing that an online conference would be the only option virtual events have significant advantages beyond just environ- amidst the COVID-19 crisis, we contacted all speakers and appli- mental aspects. Online spaces can increase societal outreach, cants to ask whether this would be in their interest and what for- improve the academic quality of discussions, create new opportu- mats they would prefer. We took this feedback into account when nities for networking, and provide an inclusive social environment. designing the virtual event, as is also recommended by the ‘Cer- In this commentary, we report on the various benefits and dis- cedilla Manifesto’ on sustainable scientific meetings (Sanz-Cobena advantages of a virtual conference and describe the tools that we et al., 2020). used. We support our arguments with the results of a feedback Table 1 describes the tools that we used, their purpose, as well as survey filled out by 38% of the 404 conference participants. We participants’ feedback. As can be seen, all tools were evaluated as argue that virtual events are not only of interest in times of positive while the webinar-style conference rooms (Section 2) were the most popular element of the event. Table 1 further presents open-source alternatives for future organizers to consider. Fig. 1 shows an overview of the participants’ opinions regarding * Corresponding author. Institut de Ciencia i Tecnologia Ambientals, Universitat  noma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), Edifici Z (ICTA-ICP), Carrer de les Columnes, Auto the advantages and disadvantages of virtual conferences. Atten- Campus de la UAB, 08193, Bellaterra Barcelona, Spain. dance costs, the amount of time to attend, and the inclusivity of E-mail address: joel.foramitti@uab.cat (J. Foramitti). different kinds of people are rated as the three strongest https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.126287 0959-6526/© 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). J. Foramitti, S. Drews, F. Klein et al. Journal of Cleaner Production 294 (2021) 126287 Table 1 Overview of the three virtual conference spaces, the tools that have been used, the participant feedback, and open-source alternatives for future conferences to consider. Space Purpose Tools used Participant Open-source feedback1 alternatives Forum/Conference Venue Private and public interactions between participants Discord 6.13/7 Riot.im, Rocket.chat Positive: 91% Lecture Hall/Conference Hosting live talks, workshops, and plenary sessions WebinarJam 6.25/7 Big Blue Button, Jitsi Rooms Positive: 96% Social Areas/Virtual Bar Mingling in a relaxed environment (e.g. at lunch breaks or in the Zoom Breakout 5.37/7 Big Blue Button, Jitsi evenings) Rooms Positive: 73% Notes: 1Average result on a 7-point Likert scale from “very negative (1) to very positive (7); “Positive” includes the response options “slightly positive”, “positive” and “very positive”. Fig. 1. Survey results regarding the difference between virtual and physical conferences. advantages. On the contrary, the quality of social interactions, the and discuss them afterwards in the forum where all prior conver- number of technical problems, and the chances to meet new col- sations of the chat are visible, and the presenters are still available laborators were rated as the biggest disadvantages, compared to for questions. Thus, people can attend sessions that they originally physical conferences. These and other aspects are discussed further missed (e.g. because of parallel sessions or time zone differences). in the subsequent sections. The availability of recordings after the sessions was the best-rated feature in the survey, with 94% of the respondents rating it as slightly to very positive. 3. Communicating research Finally, the possibility to pre-record their presentations was rated as positive or very positive by 80% of the presenters who responded Academic conferences allow researchers to present their work, to the survey. This feature has three advantages. First, pre-recordings discuss latest developments in their field, and receive valuable can be used as a backup presentation if there are technical problems. feedback. To replicate these aspects, we designed our conference Second, presenters can record in a calm space and redo the recording around two virtual spaces: a webinar platform that served as a until they are satisfied, which can improve the quality of pre- ‘lecture hall’ for talks and plenary sessions, and an online forum sentations. Third, if participants choose to play their pre-recording, that served as a virtual venue for the conference, where people they can think about questions in the chat before the end of the could seek help, interact, and discuss between the talks. presentation, which can give rise to better responses. Our experience showed that the virtual format makes it easier for researchers to get in touch with an interested audience. We had eight times more registrations for the virtual conference than for 4. Networking the physical one, and 49% of the survey respondents indicated that they would not have attended in person. Another important purpose of conferences is the social inter- Another advantage is the amount of feedback, as there is no action between participants. This is the biggest drawback of the limit on how many reactions can be given in the webinar chat. virtual format (Reshef et al., 2020). The quality of social interactions Moderators can choose the most interesting questions and co- ranked lowest among all conference elements (see Fig. 1), with 13% authors of the speaker can participate by responding in the chat. of the respondents seeing a strong disadvantage in comparison to Instant feedback is further facilitated with live polls. On average, physical conferences. However, our experience also shows positive the participants rated the quality of academic discussions as com- aspects and points to room for improvement. parable to regular physical conferences, while 60% saw an advan- One advantage is that the forum is available before and after the tage in terms of possibilities to exchange feedback (see Fig. 1). conference. Participants can maintain a conversation with several Furthermore, as talks are recorded, participants can still view people at the same time and create private groups for discussion via 2 J. Foramitti, S. Drews, F. Klein et al. Journal of Cleaner Production 294 (2021) 126287 text, audio, or video. Some participants mentioned to us that it was can be more desirable than a physical ones in terms of accessibility, easier to start conversations with influential researchers and key- inclusivity, environmental impact, and academic quality. However, note speakers in the forum than what they were used to from it also comes with several disadvantages, especially regarding physical conferences. informal interaction and screen-fatigue. The facilitation of informal Another successful feature of the conference was the introduc- spaces for social interaction remains a central challenge for future tion channel (rated slightly to very positive by 83% of the survey events of this kind. Still, thanks to the numerous benefits high- respondents). There, participants could introduce themselves and lighted in this commentary, virtual conferences have potential to share their own interests and work. This was helpful to get an become the ‘new normal’ of international academic events. overview of the participants and identify potential collaborators. Creating a casual environment for informal exchanges was more difficult. We attempted to address this through video chats in CRediT authorship contribution statement smaller breakout groups to emulate a restaurant during the lunch Joe€l Foramitti: Writing - original draft. Stefan Drews: Writing - break and a bar at the end of the conference days. This feature was o Konc: original draft. Franziska Klein: Writing - original draft. The appreciated, with 59% of the participants rating it as slightly to very positive and only 10% as slightly to very negative. However, in terms Writing - original draft. of quantity, only a small fraction of participants (27% of the re- spondents) joined at least one of the social sessions. Declaration of competing interest Another challenge that was expressed by some participants is the difficulty of staying concentrated throughout the event. This may The authors declare that they have no known competing reflect the experience of many teleworkers who are currently financial interests or personal relationships that could have confined, namely that virtual communication can be more exhausting appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. than face-to-face interaction. This is also known as ‘screen fatigue’, and could be improved by extending the event over a longer period of time. Such an extension could not just enable more breaks for Acknowledgments relaxation, but also raise the inclusivity for people from other time zones. ICTA2020 was funded by the ICTA-UAB “Maria de Maeztu” Unit of Excellence (MDM2015-0552). We further acknowledge the 5. Social and environmental virtues support by the ERC advanced-grant project EVOCLIM: Behavioral- evolutionary analysis of climate policy (grant agreement 741087), Virtual conferences not only reproduce many characteristics of a scholarship from “la Caixa” Foundation (ID 100010434, 258 LCF/ physical ones, but they also come with benefits of their own. Most BQ/IN17/11620039), and the Catalan governmental agency AGAUR. notably, they have a much smaller environmental and climate We further want to thank all organizers of ICTA2020: Vero nica impact, while they are reaching more people. A virtual conference Arcas Pilz; Oriol Baeza Martinez; Jeroen van den Bergh; Rebekah eliminates the environmental impacts of travel and large venues, Breding; Fulvia Calcagni; Esteve Corbera; Filippos Exadaktylos; Xavier although emissions associated with IT infrastructures are not Gabarrell; Alexandra García Gutie rrez; Maite Jimenez Batista; Isabel negligible (Houston and Reay, 2011). While calculating the exact Lopera Martínez; Graham Mortyn; Nick Martin; Maica Nogales emissions saved is beyond the scope of this commentary, other Malago n; Felipe Parada; Ivan Savin; Aljosa Slamersak; Ana Terra cases have shown that the environmental advantage of virtual Maia; Patrizia Ziveri. events is significant (Klo € wer et al., 2020; Neugebauer et al., 2020). Furthermore, virtual events are more flexible and easier to access. Appendix A. Supplementary data Eliminating the need for travel facilitates the attendance of re- searchers with family or time constraints. The costs per participant of Supplementary data to this article can be found online at virtual events is much lower than for physical conferences (from 135V https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.126287. to 5V in our case1). This enables participation of interested people with lower financial means from various disciplines, including non- scientists such as journalists or practitioners. However, the neces- References sity of a stable digital connection can also be a barrier for some. Finally, our experience showed that virtual conferences can Holden, M.H., Butt, N., Chauvenet, A., Plein, M., Stringer, M., Chade s, I., 2017. Aca- create a more inclusive and safe space to participate in. As can be demic conferences urgently need environmental policies. Nat. Ecol. Evol. 1 (9), 1211e1212. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-017-0296-2. seen in Fig. 1, 85% of respondents saw an advantage over physical Houston, K., Reay, D.S., 2011. The impact of information and communication tech- conferences in terms of inclusivity, and 68% in terms of the power nology on GHG emissions: how green are virtual worlds? Carbon Manag. 2 (6), dynamics between participants (e.g. senior vs. junior researchers, 629e643. https://doi.org/10.4155/cmt.11.62. € wer, M., Hopkins, D., Allen, M., Higham, J., 2020. An analysis of ways to decar- Klo or dominant behavior of some participants in debates). 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