How to plan and present an online conference
The spread of coronavirus has caused the cancellation of multi-thousand-person conferences. The world of online, many-to-many communication media -- audio and video, forums, blogs, mail lists, collaborative documents, slideshows, whiteboards -- is like a supersaturated solution and the pandemic is the seed crystal for a state change: Even without a pandemic, the carbon footprint of transporting thousands of people thousands of miles for a two or three day meeting demands action. The time has come to at least severely reduce the number of large international face to face conferences. The good news is that the available tools are robust and either free or inexpensive. However, a successful online conference doesn't just happen -- everybody knows how to partake in keynotes, workshops, hallway conversations at face to face gatherings. The skills of presenting and participating in an online version are nowhere near as widely spread. Conveners need to document, frame, and support training into how to use the new medium, as well as plan and present the keynotes and workshops at the heart of the conference. Skilled facilitators of online discourse are a must. Fortunately, there are plenty of people with the right skills.
Planning is all-important
An online conference emulates a two or three day face to face conference, complete with keynotes, discussions, informal socializing, workshops, commercial booths in an online event that takes place over a week or ten days, with both synchronous and asynchronous components. Online conferences can work well, but they need to be well designed, planned and staffed. Develop a plan in writing that encompasses the marketing, technological, and social components. Marketing: who are your participants, what do they have in common, what would attract them to your event, how do you find them and persuade they to take a look, how do you prepare and support their use of a means of meeting that may be new to them? Technology: Which online media do you want to use, how to host and configure the media, how to provide a single-sign-on front end that serves as a uniform interface to all the media, how will you support that infrastructure and the users? Social: What do you plan to communicate about, who will facilitate conversations, who are the keynoters and workshop presenters, what are the rules of participation? Ideally, you should complete your plan two or three months before the event (this includes time to market the event). In the late 1990s, I ran a consulting group that organized a few online conferences, Rheingold Associates (no longer operates). Our capabilities were limited -- this was years before YouTube or broadband -- but today's social multimedia would never have come into existence if it had not been for the decades of popularity for text-based listservs, newsgroups, BBSs, and MUDs. In more recent years, I've taught online courses that include the more contemporary media that I would recommend for an online conference of hundreds or thousands of people: forum, synchronous audio-video, embedded videos and slideshows, blogs, realtime chat, email newsletters. Before thinking about the technicalities of installing and configuring media, however, you should understand the role each medium will play in your event.
The forum (or discussion board)
We used a web-based forum (aka discussion board), Caucus. It still exists, is configurable, and is Free & Open Source. Today, discourse.org, (also FOSS) is also a good choice for a web forum. The front end of our 1990s conferences was a graphic that emulated the customary elements of a ftf conference: Registration desk, help desk, cafe. There was a graphical entrance to each day's events. Each day included presentations and discussions. The first post in a presentation thread was by the presenter (now it could be a short video), and the presenter spent time over the week of the online conference responding and participating asynchronously in the thread. There was a thread about how it all works and what the rules are, a thread for asking questions, a thread for introductions, a thread for discussion of what other threads we wanted to start. (The last point is important: Until the community learns how it all works, limit the creation of new threads to the convener/facilitator. This prevents a confusing proliferation of threads, and it also concretely demonstrates the participatory nature of the conversation by talking about what the group most wants to discuss). Each week had a team of online facilitators -- we had people all over the world, so there was at least one online facilitator online and available at all times. For a conference of less than a hundred, three or four facilitators can handle the job; for a conference of hundreds or thousands, you will want a facilitator for every 200 people (so a conference of 2000 would need 10 facilitators).
The purpose of a forum is to provide a place for the voice of the group, and can become a place for community formation: because it is asynchronous, people all over the world can participate in the discourse on their own time; because it is structured, large groups can have multiple conversations about multiple topics over longer periods of time (and all good forums keep track of what each individual has read and presents on each login only the posts and threads that have happened since the last login); and because the goal of the forum, scaffolded by the way it is presented and facilitated, is to cultivate a culture of conversation. These days, those conversations can include multimedia, with graphics and videos embedded in posts. I wrote about why and how to use forums (and why Facebook groups suck for that purpose) in a previous post. (For a detailed look at how discussion boards can be used in higher education, see this article on "Shaping a Culture of Conversation." You will have to scroll down the page.)
Live (synchronous) audio-video
These days, daily or weekly audio-video many-to-many sessions via Zoom, bigbluebutton or Shindig could be added. Until July 1, 2020, Google has offered free access to advanced Hangouts Meet for the purpose of virtual conferences of large numbers of people. An audio-video application should enable dozens or hundreds of participants to receive and transmit audio and video simultaneously; presenters should be able to present slides and videos or lead participants on a tour of websites; public and private text chats should be available; audio, video, and text should be downloadable; ideally, participants could use a collaborative whiteboard. When I taught online classes, I used the first live session to present the overall goal of the course, give a quick overview of the media we will use -- and introduce support and documentation of the media, give a quick overview of the course sessions, and then invite the cohort of 20-30 to introduce themselves. Most importantly, I introduce the collaborative, participative nature of our co-learning. On the white board, I brainstormed with co-learners a number of roles for simultaneous participation during live sessions -- activities that took place during and after lectures and discussions. Searchers would search out good resources for subjects raised in the live lecture and discussion, then enter the URLs in the text chat. Contextualizers would download the URLs presented by the searchers and add two or three descriptive sentences, then turn the contextualized links over to the wikimaster, who would create a page after each live session that includes contextualized links, a link to a transcript of text chat, link to audio-video recording of session, link to mindmaps, and the lexicon. The lexicon team would identify words and phrases from the lecture, discussions, or texts and post them on a collaboratively editable document. Then, over the following week, it was the task of all participants to expand those definitions, Wikipedia style.
Blogs
Just as forums are a container for the voice of the group, blogs are containers for the voice of individual participants. It is possible to give each participant who wants one a blog that is syndicated to a common page. A WordPress site can be the hub for an online conference, with links to all the main components -- I used a WP site for the hub of one of my courses, with links and pulldown menus for all the components of the course, and a stream of syndicated posts from students down the center. It is possible to link to a forum or other space without requiring additional sign-ons. Participants can broadcast their own views, reflect on their conference experience, stir up discourse via comment threads.
Synchronous chat
Participants can text chat via Slack or Discord (which also has voice chat), or roll your own front end to IRC. Whichever application or service you use, post a clear and concise set of rules for conduct (respect each other; argue ideas and issues but don't attack people; don't do anything illegal). Trained facilitators should be available, which means it is probably logistically necessary to limit access to certain hours.
Other media
You can also include online shops -- just as many face to face conferences include rooms full of sponsor booths. Apps and services for online annotation, whiteboarding, slideshows can also be included -- if and only if your plan articulates a clear reason and use.
Preparing, marketing and supporting participation
With hundreds of participants in an activity that was new to probably all of them, we were careful with preparation and support. At least a month before the conference, launch a full website with all the information about keynoters, workshops, communication features. Assuming that you have accumulated an email list of prospects, send out an email a month before the conference, with a link to pre-registration; include a short description of the nature and benefits of participation. We sent email a week before the conference started, explaining in more detail how it all worked, with links to further info and pre-registration. We emailed a reminder the day before opening, and on opening day we emailed a link to self-register or enter the welcome center. Every day, a team of "cybrarians" compiled summaries of the day's action in a "daily newsletter" format and emailed participants the links to the current day's presentations and threads. A "cybrary" page from the main website was maintained, with citations and links for books, articles, and other media discussed in the threads. Our facilitators operated under the values I compiled in https://medium.com/@hrheingold/the-art-of-hosting-good-online-conversations-38c6d06642d0
Recruit volunteers from your enthusiasts: Encourage groups to self-organize their own newsletters, to be posted on the website (not broadcast via email); encourage people to edit collaborative documents compiling useful lore mined from the conversations. Maintain an ongoing forum thread about what works in the overall conference, what can be improved, and what should be eliminated.