I've been catching up with some #HistSciFest sessions I couldn't see live, and reflecting on what it means to take a conference online. In my day job I might be planning an online festival later this year, so it was brilliant to see a success story. A few thoughts...
If the conference had taken place in Aberystwyth I wouldn't have been able to go, even if the pandemic hadn't happened. Childcare would have made it very difficult and my day job is 'academic related'. That means that extensive academic conference attendance is not expected.
The same is true for many other museum staff, archivists, librarians and other professionals whose work relates to or supports history of science research. There are lots of ways to be a historian of science. It was a pleasure to see a number of collections colleagues dipping in.
This format meant I could participate around childcare and even submit a session. Other participants in my session were museum professionals who, though working with history of science collections, would have been unlikely to attend a full academic conference.
Several people I chatted to in the public house evening sessions also said they wouldn't have been able to attend for a wide range of reasons: cost of international travel, access issues with physical conferences, and childcare all came up.
Although it's been brilliant to be able to catch up with replays, there was still value in attending live in order to follow the chat, ask / upvote / comment on questions. This seems key! It was far better than a bunch of videos that I might get around to watching sometime.
The public house socials were a revelation. I generally find post-conference drinks / meals hard work. You have to navigate which groups you 'belong' to, or be brave enough to wade into new groups. Added to that my hearing is poor in settings with background noise.
I loved how democratic it was being thrown at random into a 'room' with people from all over the place, and at lots of different career stages. I had some fascinating conversations, lots of fun and also made contacts that might develop into longer term professional relationships.
One of the few things I missed from a physical conference was having an attendee list and having the opportunity to seek out somebody I wanted to connect with. I'd be interested to see how that could happen in an online space. Of course Twitter is where some of that happens.
I enjoyed the richness of a week-long festival. An alternative model might have been shorter, and more subject-focused. But, as happens at the best conferences, I attended things outside of my research area because I was enjoying being part of the event.
No doubt having one big festival makes marketing and audience building *much* easier! But also it also seems necessary to building an event that the whole community joins in with. The just-for-fun bits of the programme help hugely with that too.
Looking towards a post-covid-crisis way of working, I hope that the online festival model continues, and not as a bolt-on to physical conferences. I'd be sad to see a two-tier system emerge where those who can afford it attend in person, while others only see part of a conference
I'd like to see the opportunity for post-session chat to help tease out ideas that come up (possibly the themed Coffee House sessions did some of that, but for various reasons I didn't make it to any of those).
However, because I find conference socialising difficult for reasons mentioned above, I actually think I intellectually got the same amount from the festival as I do from a typical conference - but with lots of advantages (transcripts, replays, supportive chat and Q&A... 👍)
I'm interested to see what everybody else thinks! What did you think worked / didn't work? If you were in my shoes, and thinking about running your own festival, what would you keep / change?
Finally, I just want to add my virtual applause and thanks to the organisers. Bravo! @SamHistSci @skidwayy @nicola_sugden and your teams #HistSciFest 👏👏👏
