I’ve been “attending” (if that’s the right word) the virtual #ESA2020 meeting. I had a look at a few presentations over the weekend. Here are some random thoughts:
- I love the ESA meeting and really miss it. But given that it’s a virtual meeting this year, I am very fortunate and happy to be able to attend while sitting on my deck drinking beer.
- There’s no point to distinguishing between talks and posters at a virtual meeting. Some #ESA2020 “posters” are pdf slide decks! Which is fine. I’d suggest that future virtual meetings just have “presentations” and let presenters upload their presentation in any common file format–an mp4 video, a pdf of a slide deck, a jpeg of a poster, whatever. Subject only to some upper limit on file size.
- I’m still on the lookout for anyone who got really creative with the video of their talk. Like, filmed the video while walking around a field site, or set the talk to music, or something.
- I love being able to skip talk introductions I don’t need. Conversely, I bet some viewers who are new to the topic of the talk like being able to pause and rewind the introduction.
- I wonder how much discussion the meeting will generate on social media, given that the content is restricted to registered attendees? And how many people will just post their presentations somewhere else so as to get around that? I dunno, maybe online meetings need a leaky paywall? Anyone can view X free posters/talks; beyond that, you have to pay the registration fee.
- I predict that hardly anyone will do Q&A (i.e. post comments on the presentations). Which is a bummer for me, since I really could use some feedback on my presentation. The whole topic is a big departure for me, so it would really help me to get feedback from people who know more about the topic than I do. (hint hint) (UPDATE: here’s a pdf of my slides. I’ll maybe post the video of the talk at some point.)
- See if you can spot the continuity error in my talk. 🙂
- It is surprisingly pleasant to see brief video clips of the talking heads of my friends. I miss you all, hope to see you in person in Long Beach for #ESA2021.
Dynamic Ecology 
I actually really like the idea of a leaky paywall. That could provide relevant content for students or far away researchers, but could also work as an introdoction of th event itself so that people can decide if they want to join or not
“how many people will just post their presentations somewhere else so as to get around that?” I expected a link there to YOUR talk on Figshare, or even just posted here… I even moused over the sentence a second times looking for a little hidden link, an easter egg if you will. Having not found one, now I am sad.
I wasn’t sure if presenters were supposed to do that! Maybe I’ll post the slide deck as a compromise.
post updated with a pdf of my slides
I posted my talk on my website with captions (I assumed that ESA would automatically add captions to all talks; I was mistaken) and because I wrote the talk to double as a video mini-lecture for a remote or flipped Intro to Ecology course and I’d love for other faculty to use it this fall.
One more random thought: I think this is the first time in my career that my ESA talk has been related to the official meeting theme.
My prediction that hardly anybody would comment on the virtual ESA meeting presentations may end up being wrong. A number of the presentations I’ve viewed now have comments. Of course, that’s a very small and non-random subset of the presentations, so I have no idea if it generalizes.
Having asked ~10 Qs, I must say 2-3 didn’t get posted on the 1st try due to some fault (they just disappear… had to re-ask).
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