Imagine going to a major conference and only 100 people show up. All the name badges fit on a table. No locals to greet you with a conference bag, no meals provided, no conference dinner. Only a beverage machine.
A show of a few percent of the usual 1000s of attendees is perhaps farfetched, but less than 50% is a real possibility.
COVID-19 will tip scientific conferences into a new regime. The fear of the virus itself is only part of the equation – logistic and environmental parameters will weigh heavily. The prospect of the costs of travel, conference registration and lodging – not to mention the time and stress of travel – will figure prominently in decisions to attend. Increasingly preoccupying environmental concerns associated with the absurdly high tonnage of carbon released into the atmosphere even for short-haul flights, will change perceptions of the costs and benefits of conference attendance.
...And there is a third, somewhat unanticipated, part of the decision-to-attend equation. Webinars. Physical distancing during COVID has made virtual conferencing the unwelcome new normal. We all have become experts in the previously ignored intricacies of Zoom, Hangouts and the venerable Skype. After only a few Webinars, we realize that we can leave the room for a break and, for that matter, only return once the event is finishing or hours after it is done. Duff meetings no more! Anonymous flexibility.
But this is a featureless, dour world. It downgrades friends and colleagues to 2-D animations. Try having a useful conversation when the video is fritzing, the person speaking has a mouth full of food, or the conversation becomes sclerotized due to the as-yet-unnamed phenomenon of persistent mutual interruption. Video risks making science a dry, technical profession, rather than what we came to know pre-COVID: the exploration of curiosity, crazy limits and synergies with other multi-dimensional people. Too much TV can’t be good for scientists nor for science.
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Vaccines will bring us back to normality, but not entirely. Conferences – and likely committee meetings and workshops too – will be Bayesian. We will each have our own prior. Excepting those who are gung-ho about physically attending, this will be a world of registration extensions and last-minute decisions. Travel logistics will be carefully scrutinized as will registration fees for physical vs. virtual attendance. Having a talk or poster accepted will weigh more heavily in physical attendance decisions than ever before. But most of all, there will be the fear that most everyone else is Bayesian and of a cascade of defection to the flexible, less polluting, virtual option. On the day of the conference only a handful of the most highly motivated and the non-Bayesians show.
Conference organizing committees will need to meet the challenges of promoting physical attendance, anticipating and reserving facilities such as conference centers and hotel rooms, and commissioning filming crews to cater for Webinar participants. Much of this will come down to economics: budgeting acceptable registration fees for physical and virtual participants so as to at least break even. But what will physical attendees be willing to pay given they could opt for the cheaper, more flexible option of watching at home? The complex interplay between Bayesian event organization and Bayesian participation is likely to produce interesting if not unpredictable dynamics and outcomes. Given risk-adversity and economies of scale, are we ultimately looking at higher physical participation costs for lower quality conferences?
The top-down/bottom-up nature of this collective action problem has the makings of a sort of Tragedy of the Commons, where risk adversity – on the part of both potential attendees and conference organization committees – could reduce physical attendance and, by extension, negatively impact event quality and the longer-term interests of the scientific community.
But a dystopian conference future is not a done deal. Stable norms in decision-making are stymied during disruptive periods, meaning that Bayesian attitudes to conferencing will subside as the world gets back to normality. Indeed, we are likely to see an incredibly enthusiastic return to physical conferencing, even if attendance is not what it was pre-COVID.
To this, we need to rethink why we have conferences in the first place. Part of the equation is sure to be the emergent properties of this unique institution. Nowhere else can we so easily meet colleagues in person, exchange ideas, forge collaborations and start friendships. Conference organizing committees will need to adapt to this new landscape and be inventive. Individual scientists should be choosy, but not overly so. To continue to thrive, individual complacency and opting-out will have to be addressed.
The Bayesians within us will need to be educated and tamed.