Posted on 19th August 2021
Currently IWOTA2020 is running, a year late and on Zoom. Many of the talks I have attended have been really interesting, but I am not convinced that a big conference like this works well over Zoom. For me, much of the point of large conferences is that I find myself in unusually parallel sessions, learning about things I haven't seen before. I can catch up with old friends and acquaintances, or make new ones, over the coffee breaks. What I've noticed here, and at other large meetings, is that attendance at the parallel sessions often seems rather small. I guess the motivation to go to something a bit random "out of interest" (but maybe, really, because the coffee has run out, and there is not much else to do) doesn't work when video-conferencing.
Anyway, on Monday, I gave an in-person talk at a satellite session, in a small meeting in honour of Garth Dales's retirement. It was slightly weird to be talking in person again. What I more noticed was how much I enjoyed listening to (the other) talks in person. It's so much easier to concentrate, and make good notes, when I'm sat there in person in lecture room. Both Niels and Jared gave nice talks, but it cannot just be down to their skill as speakers that I found the whole event so much more rewarding than Zooming.
One advantage of the current situation has been the ability to attend seminars and meetings in other countries, which just wasn't possible before. Without a seminar at my home university, even attending a single talk is a solid afternoon's worth of effort, at least. Teaching timetables mean longer workshops are often just impossible. So, while I would say "in person" is better, I do hope that "hybrid" events might continue long past the pandemic.